Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, in his as­sess­ment of the British Privy Coun­cil’s judg­ment re the dis­missal of the sedi­tion charge brought against Mr Sat­nar­ine Ma­haraj, for state­ments he made on his elec­tron­ic Jaagri­ti me­dia sta­tions, said the con­clu­sion of the judg­ment is that the pros­e­cu­tion failed to prove Mr Ma­haraj’s in­ten­tion in mak­ing the state­ment was to cause vi­o­lence and pub­lic dis­or­der.

In his pub­lic broad­cast of 2019, the then head of Jaagri­ti, the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion sta­tions owned by the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, claimed that six out of ten cit­i­zens work for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and are lazy, and the “rest of them on the beach hunt­ing for white meat; they see ah lit­tle white girl on the beach they rape she,” as stat­ed in the judg­ment of the Privy Coun­cil.

On the face of it, that is quite an ac­cusato­ry and con­dem­na­to­ry state­ment to make re­gard­ing the char­ac­ter and ac­tions of tens of thou­sands of peo­ple liv­ing in To­ba­go. That the vast ma­jor­i­ty of na­tive res­i­dents of the is­land are black, and giv­en the his­tor­i­cal an­tag­o­nism be­tween In­do and Afro-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, of­ten sparked by such sweep­ing po­lit­i­cal state­ments from ei­ther group, the angst of the time was high.

How­ev­er, the state­ment did not cause an over­flow of vi­o­lence on the streets. Sedi­tion was, there­fore, not proven, states SC Ma­haraj in his in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the de­ci­sion of the fi­nal court. What the se­nior coun­sel seemed thrilled about is the space cre­at­ed by the judg­ment for me­dia crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment and oth­ers, with­out breach­ing the sedi­tion law. Mr Ma­haraj, how­ev­er, not­ed there is room for a civ­il mat­ter of defama­tion to be brought.

Such a con­clu­sion by the high­est court of the land does give me­dia hous­es a lit­tle more room for car­ry­ing crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment and its poli­cies with­out be­ing sub­ject to as­sured con­vic­tion by the fi­nal court.

Jour­nal­ists, com­men­ta­tors and me­dia hous­es should rel­ish the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be con­struc­tive­ly crit­i­cal of Gov­ern­ment and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions, once they are as­sured no pub­lic vi­o­lence will re­sult from their broad­casts and news­pa­per sto­ries.

The rul­ing must re­sult in a strength­en­ing of the democ­ra­cy pur­sued here un­der the right of free­dom of speech, as stip­u­lat­ed in the Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion.

The T&T Guardian hur­ries to make clear though, that this news­pa­per and as­so­ci­at­ed me­dia hous­es do not read the judg­ment as a go-ahead to al­low in­cen­di­ary re­marks against the Gov­ern­ment, pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions or in­di­vid­u­als, just be­cause the law car­ries a mea­sure of pro­tec­tion for fair and when need­ed, nec­es­sary crit­i­cism.

What we are sure of, is that the judg­ment does not free the me­dia of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to stay with­in the laws of the coun­try, and not eas­i­ly pan­der to ap­petites for the sala­cious and sen­sa­tion­al.

What we in Trinidad and To­ba­go have to be pleased about is a court sys­tem which will not bow to the dic­tates of any gov­ern­ment.

It is of­ten fash­ion­able to ask whether Trinidad and To­ba­go “is a re­al coun­try”. This judg­ment an­swers that ques­tion about the strength of our le­gal and po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions: the judg­ment has been made, and know­ing­ly it will be fol­lowed by the po­lit­i­cal arm of the state with the sup­port of the pop­u­la­tion.