Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has de­scribed a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter is­sued on be­half of Crime Watch talk show host Ian Al­leyne, who test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19, as a the­atre of pub­lic and po­lit­i­cal spec­ta­cle.

Al­leyne’s at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen sent the let­ter to Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Roshan Paras­ram on Tues­day, chal­leng­ing the de­ci­sion not to dis­charge his client from the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal af­ter he had al­leged­ly test­ed neg­a­tive twice.

A re­lease from the Of­fice of the AG, signed by at­tor­ney Ten­nile Ramkissoon, yes­ter­day said the CMO had in­struct­ed them that Al­leyne test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus on March 24 and April 8, 2020, neg­a­tive on April 12 and pos­i­tive on April 14. It said the sam­ple which re­sult­ed in the pos­i­tive test was tak­en on April 13, 2020. As such, it said Al­leyne did not meet the con­di­tions for dis­charge from quar­an­tine at the present time.

“The Ex­ec­u­tive has at all times act­ed and con­tin­ues to act law­ful­ly and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly. The com­bi­na­tion of your client’s own dis­sem­i­na­tion of dra­mat­ic videos to the pub­lic on the night of March 25, 2020, af­ter he ex­pressed fear of pub­lic em­bar­rass­ment and the need for con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, cou­pled with the dis­patch of your own let­ter to the me­dia tonight be­fore de­liv­ery to the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, can eas­i­ly lead one to be­lieve quite re­gret­tably that the the­atre of pub­lic and po­lit­i­cal spec­ta­cle seems para­mount to your client. Sure­ly, it can­not be lost up­on the av­er­age ob­serv­er that both your client and you your­self have been ac­tive politi­cians for the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress,” the AG’s let­ter stat­ed.

In giv­ing the back­ground, the let­ter said it was Al­leyne who con­tact­ed Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh by tele­phone on March 24, and in­formed him he had test­ed pos­i­tive “and that he was afraid of the pub­lic em­bar­rass­ment that could be caused by the spec­ta­cle of mem­bers of the TTPS tak­ing (him) Al­leyne in­to quar­an­tine pur­suant to the pro­vi­sions of the Quar­an­tine Act, Chap­ter 28:01”.

The let­ter said Deyals­ingh “specif­i­cal­ly in­formed Al­leyne that he knew noth­ing of any mat­ter re­lat­ing to his med­ical con­di­tion, let alone his re­sults. How­ev­er, it not­ed that Deyals­ingh made in­quiries that same night and at­tempt­ed to call Al­leyne to re­port his find­ings and to as­suage Al­leyne’s anx­i­ety.

“De­spite sev­er­al at­tempts, Al­leyne did not take any tele­phone calls from the min­is­ter,” the let­ter not­ed.

It said Ramdeen sub­se­quent­ly called Deyals­ingh and in­formed him he was act­ing on be­half of Al­leyne.

“There­after, you per­son­al­ly co-or­di­nat­ed your client’s vol­un­tary ad­mis­sion in­to quar­an­tine, go­ing as far as to send Al­leyne’s ad­dress to the Min­is­ter of Health by What­sapp so that he could be trans­port­ed by am­bu­lance ser­vices,” Ramkissoon said in the let­ter.

“Quite shock­ing­ly, that very night of March 24, and be­fore Al­leyne was trans­port­ed up by am­bu­lance ser­vices arranged through you (Ramdeen), your client post­ed two sep­a­rate videos of him­self on so­cial me­dia by which he tear­ful­ly and quite dra­mat­i­cal­ly in­formed the world that he had test­ed pos­i­tive for the COVID-19 virus and that he would be ad­mit­ted in­to quar­an­tine.”

Ramkissoon al­so crit­i­cised Ramdeen for send­ing the let­ter to the me­dia be­fore it was re­ceived by Paras­ram.

“Your said let­ter to Dr Paras­ram, the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, has not been re­ceived by him, but has come to his at­ten­tion through the cour­tesy of mem­bers of the me­dia who have giv­en wide na­tion­al cov­er­age of it tonight.”

She al­so said Ramdeen’s let­ter was “premised up­on fac­tu­al in­ac­cu­ra­cies” spring-board­ing in­to pre­ma­ture threat­ened ac­tion”.