Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin has con­firmed that charges are ex­pect­ed to be laid against one per­son for in­cit­ing po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence on­line, while in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to oth­ers have been launched as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) as­serts it is tak­ing a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to threats made in the run-up to the April 28th Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Ben­jamin yes­ter­day is­sued a stern warn­ing to so­cial me­dia users, con­demn­ing the use of on­line plat­forms to pro­mote or in­cite vi­o­lence, whether di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, against sup­port­ers of op­pos­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

“At least one per­son for sure was ar­rest­ed and the mat­ter is with the DPP to give ad­vice as to what will be the next step with that,” Ben­jamin to Guardian Me­dia.

He ex­pressed deep con­cern over a grow­ing trend in which in­di­vid­u­als are us­ing skits, memes and provoca­tive posts to fu­el po­lit­i­cal ten­sions.

“We will not stand by and al­low per­sons to in­cite any sort of vi­o­lence or even por­tray that sort of thing. When we see that, we are go­ing to be de­ci­sive in our ac­tion by speak­ing to the par­ties and if they con­tin­ue, we will take the nec­es­sary ac­tion to see to deal with those sit­u­a­tions.”

Ben­jamin ac­knowl­edged an in­di­vid­ual’s right to free­dom of speech but warned that the cre­ation of con­tent, while some­times cloaked in hu­mour or satire, can al­so un­der­mine pub­lic safe­ty.

Re­cent­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young al­leged that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) was pay­ing crim­i­nals to ha­rass Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sup­port­ers dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign and ref­er­enced a “Trini­bad” artiste who took to so­cial me­dia to make threats against those sup­port­ing a par­tic­u­lar po­lit­i­cal par­ty. The po­lice lat­er con­firmed he in­di­vid­ual had been ar­rest­ed.

In an­oth­er video re­cent­ly post­ed on so­cial me­dia, a male user is seen in an ap­par­ent skit hold­ing an­oth­er in­di­vid­ual por­tray­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to ac­count. He can be heard say­ing, “We have him right here, bob­by head, we have him right here. Where the peo­ple three bil­lion gone? We want back the peo­ple mon­ey.”

In the video, a bag is placed over the seat­ed in­di­vid­ual’s head while the oth­er per­son’s hand is cov­ered by a cloth.

Ben­jamin con­firmed that sev­er­al peo­ple have been on the po­lice’s radar for their so­cial me­dia posts con­vey­ing vi­o­lence to­wards op­pos­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ty mem­bers and sup­port­ers.

“We are ask­ing all cit­i­zens to re­sist from any form of in­cit­ing be­cause once it has been brought to our at­ten­tion we will ad­dress it. We have dealt with per­sons, we have ar­rest­ed per­sons who we be­lieve, based on their lan­guage, seem to come across in­cit­ing and we dealt with two or three of them thus far and we will con­tin­ue.”

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath al­so lament­ed that there have been re­ports of neg­a­tive cam­paign­ing and con­demned so­cial me­dia posts of in­di­vid­u­als found to be in­cit­ing vi­o­lence, di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly.

Dr Ra­goonath, who was not speak­ing in the ca­pac­i­ty as head of the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour, not­ed that there are fac­tors that need to be con­sid­ered when as­sess­ing the dig­i­tal posts.

“There are things we need to be very mind­ful of. These are so­cial me­dia posts, we don’t know who are mak­ing these posts. Are they gen­uine UNC peo­ple? Are they PNM peo­ple try­ing to show the UNC in poor light? We don’t know and we will not know based on how many times these posts have been re-post­ed. The point about it is, who is guilty?”

He al­so main­tained that so­cial me­dia now pro­vides an ad­di­tion­al plat­form for cit­i­zens to pub­licly share their sen­ti­ments about their po­lit­i­cal be­liefs. How­ev­er, he said their ac­tions al­so can­not be in con­tra­ven­tion of the coun­try’s cy­ber reg­u­la­tions.

“The gen­er­al con­cern that I have is that these things are rep­re­hen­si­ble. It is not some­thing we should en­cour­age. It un­der­mines our democ­ra­cy. Ei­ther way, it puts our elec­tion cam­paign in­to a lev­el of dis­re­pute.”

Ra­goonath said he will soon meet with the coun­cil to dis­cuss is­sues aris­ing out of the so­cial me­dia posts.

Mean­while, Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Mick­ela Pan­day told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that in­tim­i­da­tion to­wards par­ty mem­bers and sup­port­ers had in­creased but did not con­firm if the threats in­clud­ed ones made via so­cial me­dia.

“Since nom­i­na­tion day the threats and in­tim­i­da­tion tac­tics have in­ten­si­fied. Yes, po­lice re­ports have been made in the most se­vere cas­es,” Pan­day said.

In a pre­vi­ous press re­lease, the PF al­leged that prospec­tive can­di­dates pulled out of the race due to scare tac­tics. In the re­lease, the par­ty said since an­nounc­ing its in­ten­tion to con­test all seats, “ha­rass­ment and in­tim­i­da­tion of our can­di­dates be­gan. This con­tin­ued af­ter the an­nounce­ment of our sec­ond and third batch of can­di­dates on the 10th and 28th of March re­spec­tive­ly, by some high-rank­ing mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion.”

Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance leader Gary Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia that while his par­ty has not ex­pe­ri­enced a “hos­tile” po­lit­i­cal cam­paign in the lead-up to the elec­tion, he has wit­nessed what he de­scribed as “un­eth­i­cal be­hav­iour” from his op­po­nents.

“We not see­ing acts of vi­o­lence, what we are see­ing is un­eth­i­cal acts where per­sons of po­lit­i­cal par­ties try­ing to pay cit­i­zens, ask­ing them not to vote or giv­ing re­frig­er­a­tors or stoves in the hopes that those per­sons will vote for them. If you op­er­ate in such un­eth­i­cal be­hav­iour pri­or to an elec­tion, it means like you will op­er­ate like that when you get in gov­ern­ment,” Grif­fith said.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact of­fi­cials from the PNM and UNC for com­ments on the mat­ter but got no re­sponse up to press time.