Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has wel­comed “go­ing to court” af­ter he was sued by UNC MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal whom he al­leged­ly named in a con­ver­sa­tion with Fix­in T&T’s Kirk Wait­he.

It was pub­lished in the Ex­press re­cent­ly.

Row­ley spoke about the de­vel­op­ment at a cock­tail par­ty on Wednes­day host­ed by the rul­ing PNM at the Au­di­to­ri­um at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Port-of-Spain. He said he re­ceived the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter ear­li­er.

The al­leged re­marks at is­sue were made in a 2019 What­sApp ex­change be­tween Row­ley and Wait­he who had ex­pressed con­cerns about Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son Reg­is’ con­tro­ver­sial 2016 bank­ing trans­ac­tion

Seg­ments of the con­ver­sa­tion which were re­cent­ly pub­lished showed Row­ley call­ing Wait­he “a hyp­ocrite” for ig­nor­ing cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions against PP Gov­ern­ment mem­bers. He point­ed to ac­cu­sa­tions against sev­er­al PP mem­bers

Sub­se­quent­ly, Row­ley said one of the per­sons—whom he didn’t name—sent him the le­gal let­ter and the mat­ter has to go to court.

“I wel­come the mo­ment,” he added.

Yes­ter­day Mooni­lal con­firmed he that he had sent the le­gal let­ter, “I’m damn fed up with (Row­ley) call­ing my name every time he spins around .... twice he call my name. I don’t mind peo­ple call­ing my name—but not him be­cause he al­ways tries to de­monise me and I take of­fence to that. My let­ter calls for him to apol­o­gise or go to court.”

Row­ley on Wednes­day had main­tained his al­leged per­cep­tion of Wait­he. He said in their con­ver­sa­tion they’d been “ex­press­ing them­selves from deep with­in their soul”. “The next thing I know, the me­dia, my friends, pub­lished the con­ver­sa­tion in its en­tire­ty and it’s a good thing I don’t say any­thing to man or woman that I don’t ex­pect to see and be proud of in the news­pa­pers.”

Row­ley al­so re­vealed it was once his dream as a youth to be­come a jour­nal­ist but a grade six mark in the Eng­lish Lan­guage kay­oed that.

At­ten­dees at the event in­clud­ed PNM ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers and Balis­er House staff plus To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly mem­bers in­clud­ing Denise Tsoi-a Fatt An­gus who is bid­ding to be­come PNM’s To­ba­go Coun­cil leader.

Al­so present were Bryan Man­ning (son of for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning), for­mer Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion min­is­ters Arnold Pig­got and Gary Hunte plus PNM front lin­ers, most min­is­ters and new faces in­clud­ing re­cent­ly elect­ed coun­cil­lors.