sto­ries by PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi has apol­o­gised and ad­mit­ted that he should have worn a mask to pro­tect him­self and oth­ers against COVID-19 when he ap­peared on Vibes With Voicey last Thurs­day. How­ev­er, the AG stressed yes­ter­day that he did not break the law by ap­pear­ing with­out one while on the show.

“Even though no law was bro­ken, I should have act­ed bet­ter and un­re­served­ly apol­o­gise,” Al-Rawi said in a post to his so­cial me­dia page yes­ter­day.

In the post, Al-Rawi ac­knowl­edged the com­ments that have been made in the wake of his at­ten­dance at the event, which he stressed “was held in a pri­vate res­i­dence with less than 10 per­sons present in the room.”

Al-Rawi ap­peared on the show, which is host­ed by so­ca artiste Voice and ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty Jared Pen­ny, along­side North East Di­vi­sion Su­per­in­ten­dent Roger Alexan­der, me­dia per­son­al­i­ty An­cil ‘Blaze’ Isaac and celebri­ty body­guard Kevin “John­ny Bra­vo” Da Cos­ta.

He said his par­tic­i­pa­tion was meant to “bring some re­lief through char­i­ty and light-heart­ed­ness in “this time of COVID-19 fa­tigue,” but he said he erred in not wear­ing a mask at the event.

“Even though par­tic­i­pants took tem­per­a­tures and sani­tised, up­on re­flec­tion it would cer­tain­ly have been more pru­dent to wear masks in cer­tain of the set­tings. It would’ve helped en­cour­age the au­di­ence tuned in to keep the fight against COVID-19 alive, whilst hav­ing a laugh view­ing peo­ple like me shed the suit and tie and se­ri­ous talk for a bit of hu­mour,” said the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

Dur­ing his press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre on Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said it was “dis­ap­point­ing” not to see the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al wear­ing a mask dur­ing the event.

Yes­ter­day, the AG agreed with the Prime Min­is­ter’s stance on the mat­ter.

“I ful­ly sup­port the Ho­n­ourable PM’s re­flec­tions on this is­sue and es­pe­cial­ly his ex­pressed view that each of us have a part to play in fight­ing COVID-19. Quite sim­ply and in all cir­cum­stances, I am re­newed in giv­ing my per­son­al re­dou­bled com­mit­ment to do bet­ter by be­ing seen to adopt best prac­tices,” he said.

How­ev­er, Al-Rawi said that there were blurred lines with re­gard to mask-wear­ing in pri­vate set­tings.

“Some­times the lines on mask-wear­ing get blurred in pri­vate set­tings, at home func­tions, at home wed­dings, at restau­rants and even in play­ing in a small foot­ball side for health and phys­i­cal care,” he said.

“Hairs can be split and jus­ti­fi­ca­tions can be giv­en as to things be­ing tak­en out of con­text and of be­ing fed up of be­ing hound­ed. This is not an oc­ca­sion for any of that.”

Al-Rawi closed by heap­ing praise on the hosts of the char­i­ty game show, which record­ed its high­est view­er­ship.

“I am very hap­py to have sup­port­ed and to con­tin­ue to sup­port the ex­cel­lent en­tre­pre­neur­ial and phil­an­thropic work of our young amaz­ing stars Voice and Pen­ny, who con­tin­ue to find far-reach­ing rel­e­vance to a very re­al and vibezy T&T,” said Al-Rawi.