Geisha Kow­lessar

Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh in­tends to take le­gal ac­tion against in­ter­im po­lit­i­cal leader of the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP), Jack Warn­er, for defama­tion over claims Warn­er made dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Tues­day night.Warn­er was giv­en 14 days to re­spond or face le­gal ac­tion from Ra­mad­hars­ingh.Ra­mad­hars­ingh is de­mand­ing an "un­qual­i­fied apol­o­gy" on terms to be agreed by Queen's Coun­sel.

He is al­so ask­ing Warn­er not to re­peat the al­le­ga­tions or any sim­i­lar al­le­ga­tions and wants mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion for dam­age to his rep­u­ta­tion.In a sev­en-page pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to Warn­er, Ra­mad­hars­ingh's at­tor­ney, Kelvin Ramk­isoon, de­scribed the claims made by Warn­er on Tues­day as "base­less."Warn­er had claimed dur­ing an ILP meet­ing at New Set­tle­ment that a min­is­ter owned six mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar pala­tial homes and prop­er­ties as well as sev­er­al bank ac­counts abroad.

"This min­is­ter could not even buy two dou­bles be­fore the May 2010 gen­er­al elec­tions," Warn­er told the au­di­ence.He pro­duced pho­tos of what he claimed to be the homes be­long­ing to the min­is­ter.One house in cen­tral Trinidad was said to be­long to a broth­er of the min­is­ter.An­oth­er prop­er­ty in cen­tral Trinidad, Warn­er said, was pur­chased for the min­is­ter by a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress con­trac­tor in ex­change for a $36 mil­lion con­tract.

Warn­er al­so claimed an­oth­er house, al­so in cen­tral Trinidad, was pur­chased for the min­is­ter by a Tu­na­puna busi­ness­man, who in ex­change had some of his prop­er­ties rent­ed by the min­is­ter's min­istry at ex­or­bi­tant rents."I took this in­for­ma­tion to the Min­is­ter of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment, Mar­lene Coudray, and have showed her doc­u­ments of sev­er­al crooked land deals in­volv­ing this same min­is­ter," Warn­er claimed.

The let­ter said Warn­er's claims sug­gest­ed Ra­mad­hars­ingh was the min­is­ter to whom the for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter was re­fer­ring."It is there­fore clear to the rea­son­able-mind­ed lis­ten­er that the said words were and did re­late to our client as the pur­port­ed own­er of the said prop­er­ties."The gen­er­al knowl­edge in the pub­lic do­main at the time of mak­ing these state­ments was that Dr Ra­mad­hars­ingh's broth­er worked as an ad­vis­er to the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, " the let­ter said.

It added that Warn­er's claims al­so in­ferred that Ra­mad­hars­ingh was dis­hon­est and/or un­eth­i­cal and thus un­fit to hold pub­lic of­fice. It said it al­so was in­ferred that Ra­mad­hars­ingh was mo­ti­vat­ed by self-gain or re­ward and his ac­tions and con­duct were de­signed to fa­cil­i­tate that ob­jec­tive.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh's at­tor­ney said Warn­er's state­ments al­so could be in­ferred to mean that Ra­mad­hars­ingh cor­rupt­ly so­licit­ed and re­ceived funds from busi­ness­men in ex­change for lu­cra­tive state con­tracts and in so do­ing he had un­just­ly and cor­rupt­ly ac­quired mon­ey for the pur­chase of pala­tial, high-priced prop­er­ty.

It was al­so in­ferred that Ra­mad­hars­ingh's choice of con­trac­tors to un­der­take and per­form state work was guid­ed and mo­ti­vat­ed by his per­son­al re­la­tion­ships or con­nec­tions with them with the ob­jec­tive of re­ceiv­ing mon­e­tary kick-backs, the let­ter added.