Source: Trinidad Express
Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley’s attorneys have requested 28 days more to respond to Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s pre-action protocol letter threatening legal action for defamation.
In response, Persad-Bissessar’s attorney, Saddam Hosein, said that Rowley’s attorneys were engaging in “delay tactics” and demanded a response in 14 days.
On May 4, Hosein issued a pre-action protocol letter to the Prime Minister, giving a seven-day deadline to retract and apologise to Persad-Bissessar for claiming she said that Indians were being targeted by Africans in home invasions at a People’s National Movement (PNM) family day on April 30.
In addition to the public retraction of his statements and apology, the Prime Minister has also been asked to make a payment of a substantial sum in damages to Persad-Bissessar “to demonstrate the baselessness of those statements and compensate our client for the injury to her reputation and for the considerable distress and embarrassment that she has suffered and continues to suffer”.
Further, he is being asked to pay the legal costs incurred by Persad-Bissessar.
On May 10, the Prime Minister’s attorneys responded to Hosein.
Newly minted senior counsel Michael Quamina is representing the Prime Minister.
Attorney Adana Bain, who instructs Quamina, stated that Hosein’s pre-action protocol letter did not enclose with it a recording, video or otherwise, of Rowley’s full presentation at the PNM family day in Toco.
The attorney requested that the recording be provided and the specific words complained about.
Bain requested 28 days to respond, noting that “time is required especially having regard to the many components of a defence to a claim in slander, and in particular, when a defence of fair comment may be contemplated”.
Hosein responded by letter dated May 12, 2023, noting that a link was provided for the relevant part of Rowley’s “defamatory speech” in the pre-action protocol letter.
He further noted there were extensive news reports on the Prime Minister’s speech, and “we are under no obligation to provide your client with a copy of anything more than this. Your client is the Prime Minister of the country, and should he wish to have access to a complete audio-visual recording of his speech, it would be simple for him to obtain the same from the PRO of his party or State-owned TTT which is controlled by the Government”.