SHOULD WE GIVE MORE POWER TO THE PEOPLE?

 In 1919 a Supreme Court Justice in the United States called Oliver Wendell Holmes coined the well known phrase about shouting  'fire' in a crowded cinema or theatre. He was basically arguing that there has to be a limit to free speech and despite the fact that most democracies (like T&T) have a constitutional provision that guarantees free speech, this provision ought to have (and often does have) limitations. For example the law of defamation ensures that you cannot say something that isn't true (such as 'X killed Y') unless you can prove it even though you might believe it to be true.

But in the American State of Ohio they have a most interesting twist on this. In Ohio any citizen who feels aggrieved  about something (such as the lies that Trump -or Drumpf as his grandfather was called  before he 'Amercanised' his name- and his running mate J.D. Vance, have propagated against the Haitian community) that somebody has said can file a criminal complaint against that person asking a judge to hold them criminally liable. The complaint must show evidence of the untruths.

In case you might have missed it both Drumpf (I refuse to call him 'Trump') and Vance have said that legal Haitian immigrants are stealing people's pets and eating them! As ridiculous as this sounds both of these guys have repeated this outrageous claim. Putting it simply, this rhetoric is racist and ought to be condemned for reasons that (hopefully) are clear and obvious.

So? The question arises: do we have politicians (from both sides of the political divide) who use coded (and sometimes not so coded) rhetoric to fan the flames of racism?  Do we need a law, such as in Ohio, which would allow an aggrieved citizen to bring criminal charges against  a politician when the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions neglects and/or refuses to take action against persons who may be making dangerous comments? There have been quite a few complaints over the years about the DPP letting offensive and racist statements go by the board. Are these complaints with or without foundation?

Maybe it's time that we gave a little more power to the people.  Perhaps we should look at what Ohio has done. A lot of our laws were written by our former colonial masters. That doesn't make them right.