The Sedi­tion Act, un­used in the past, is now emerg­ing a vi­tal in­stru­ment of the po­lice. What is not clear is whether the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is act­ing on its vo­li­tion or is re­spond­ing to a pub­lic com­plaint. Sat Ma­haraj made state­ments which were con­sid­ered “sedi­tious” and led to a search at the ra­dio sta­tion where those com­ments were made. Court ac­tion was re­quired to” force” the TTPS to pro­duce a search war­rant which ought to have been pre­sent­ed as a mat­ter of rou­tine. No charge has been made in that mat­ter to date. Yes­ter­day, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty dis­closed at the post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence that at least one charge of sedi­tion would be laid against trade union leader and politi­cian Wat­son Duke.

A sedi­tious in­ten­tion is de­fined in sec­tion 3 (1) claus­es a to e of the act. Clause c is a catchall de­f­i­n­i­tion; “to raise dis­con­tent or dis­af­fec­tion amongst in­hab­i­tants of Trinidad and To­ba­go.” The crit­i­cal is­sue, there­fore, is to de­ter­mine a per­son's in­tent.

There are a num­ber of points to be con­sid­ered.

First, who is the com­plainant, or are the po­lice act­ing in their own right? The po­lice ser­vice has its hands full deal­ing with the crime surge, the spi­ralling mur­der rate in par­tic­u­lar. There is al­ready a se­vere back­log of cas­es in the courts, where post­pone­ments are the norm due to the non-ap­pear­ance of po­lice of­fi­cers. Is it that the po­lice are now pa­trolling the air­waves as part of an ex­er­cise in “to­tal polic­ing” or fol­low­ing a pol­i­cy of “no bro­ken win­dows?” If that is the case, sure­ly there are more im­por­tant ar­eas re­quir­ing at­ten­tion.

Sec­ond, was the of­fence com­mit­ted in a pub­lic broad­cast­ing space? If yes, then this is the province of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty (TATT), which has wide pow­ers, not the least of which would be the pow­er to sus­pend a broad­cast­er's op­er­a­tions. Giv­en its broad pow­ers, TATT would hard­ly need a search war­rant.

Third, is it ap­pro­pri­ate for the an­nounce­ment to be made by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty? The Min­is­ter could give no de­tails of MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald's ar­rest or charges which were even­tu­al­ly re­leased by the po­lice. The Po­lice Ser­vice is meant to be sep­a­rate from the Ex­ec­u­tive branch, lest it be tempt­ed to ex­ceed its pow­er and thus threat­en the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights of cit­i­zens.

Union lead­ers and politi­cians are of­ten giv­en to rhetoric on pub­lic plat­forms, which would not be con­sid­ered ac­cept­able in ra­tio­nal and con­sid­ered dis­course, es­pe­cial­ly at elec­tion time. Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, Law Dean at UWI St Au­gus­tine, has cau­tioned that “sedi­tion can be used as a po­lit­i­cal tool since it is not amongst our es­tab­lished norms,” George Or­well warned that "threats to free­dom of speech, writ­ing and ac­tion, though of­ten triv­ial in iso­la­tion, are cu­mu­la­tive in their ef­fect and, un­less checked, lead to a gen­er­al dis­re­spect for the rights of the cit­i­zen." Is this a new po­lice ini­tia­tive?