With just two weeks un­til the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, the Con­gress of Peo­ple (COP) has claimed po­lit­i­cal in­tim­i­da­tion as its St Ann’s East can­di­date Ger­rard Small was re­cent­ly kicked out of his cam­paign of­fice.

Small al­so re­ceived a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter from Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert. Both in­ci­dents oc­curred with­in one week.

Small claimed he re­cent­ly rent­ed of­fice space on Sad­dle Road in San­ta Cruz, walk­ing dis­tance from the cam­paign of­fice of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s St Ann’s East can­di­date Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, both of which are owned by for­mer well-known lo­cal pro­mot­er William Munro.

Small said he oc­cu­pied the of­fice for three days af­ter mak­ing a down­pay­ment and re­ceiv­ing the keys, but to his sur­prise on Fri­day, was told by the agent of the prop­er­ty that he had to va­cate the space be­cause the PNM does not want the of­fice leased to an op­po­nent.

Small said he had no pri­or knowl­edge that the prop­er­ty was leased to the PNM nor did he sign an of­fi­cial con­tract.

Nev­er­the­less, he said he’s been told un­of­fi­cial­ly that be­cause he’s been mak­ing waves in the con­stituen­cy, peo­ple with­in the PNM may not want him there.

COP’s po­lit­i­cal leader Prakash Ra­mad­har al­so ques­tioned the tim­ing of the evic­tion hint­ing at po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

Ra­mad­har said, “What day is elec­tion again? What day is to­day? He’s been thrown out of his of­fice. Dis­rup­tion of his cam­paign. Thank good­ness he is a dif­fer­ent kind of per­son. It could have had the ef­fect to say, ‘You know what, boy this is big thing, I done’, and dis­turb his mo­men­tum and equi­lib­ri­um.”

He said the par­ty’s lawyers have writ­ten to the land­lord seek­ing an ex­pla­na­tion.

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to Munro, he rub­bished the idea say­ing “Mak­ing a big deal of noth­ing”, be­fore end­ing the call abrupt­ly.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Gads­by-Dol­ly who said she was fo­cused on her own cam­paign.

She said, “I have no deal­ings with the COP, and I cer­tain­ly have no in­for­ma­tion about any cam­paign of­fice ex­cept my own. My at­ten­tion is ful­ly fo­cused on con­tin­ued de­liv­ery to the peo­ple of St Ann’s East. We cur­rent­ly have the Sam Bou­caud Bridge un­der con­struc­tion, paving in La Sagess (Road)...we start con­struc­tion of a new wa­ter treat­ment plant in San­ta Cruz to­mor­row which will help to pro­vide more wa­ter for my con­stituents.”

Ra­mad­har al­so al­leged the PNM may be at­tempt­ing to in­tim­i­date his can­di­date as at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Im­bert sent Small a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter over com­ments he made in Jan­u­ary.

Small said, “I re­ceived a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col (let­ter) on my can­di­date page un­der my alias, un­der where I work as a talk show host. So that has been an is­sue. I found it very strange that they would send it to my In­sta­gram in­box and not serve me prop­er­ly and gave me un­til the 20th of this month to re­spond.”

He added, “But they are not go­ing to de­rail my cam­paign. My cam­paign is go­ing great and St Ann’s East is alive and well. Peo­ple are com­ing out in the hun­dreds.”

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a copy of the let­ter sent by Hove’s Court on April 12, which ac­cused Small of defama­tion of char­ac­ter by pub­lish­ing li­bel­lous state­ments on Face­book.

Small was asked to cease and de­sist from mak­ing fur­ther posts about Im­bert.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia at WASA’s Pub­lic Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre, St Joseph yes­ter­day, Im­bert con­firmed the le­gal ac­tion.