Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gen­er­al Elec­tion can­di­date for Diego Mar­tin North/East, Colm Im­bert, has con­firmed le­gal ac­tion is un­der­way against nine in­di­vid­u­als—in­clud­ing a Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) can­di­date—over defam­a­to­ry state­ments made about him on so­cial me­dia.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at a grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny for the Pipe Plumb­ing Skills Train­ing Pro­gramme, where 89 ap­pren­tices re­ceived cer­tifi­cates qual­i­fy­ing them to be­come san­i­ta­tion plumb­ing con­trac­tors, Im­bert said pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters were be­ing is­sued.

“I can’t re­call all of them at the mo­ment—I be­lieve it’s about nine. I’ll have to get back to you on that,” Im­bert said when asked about the in­di­vid­u­als in­volved.

Guardian Me­dia has con­firmed that two of the nine in­di­vid­u­als have al­ready been served le­gal let­ters.

Among them is pop­u­lar ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty Ger­ard Small, al­so known as “M X,” who is con­test­ing the St Ann’s East seat for the COP.

The pre-ac­tion let­ter, dat­ed April 12 and is­sued by the Hove & As­so­ciates on be­half of Im­bert, ac­cus­es Small of shar­ing false and ma­li­cious con­tent on Face­book that al­leged­ly de­famed the min­is­ter and harmed his per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion. The let­ter de­mands the im­me­di­ate re­moval of the of­fend­ing posts and all re­lat­ed defam­a­to­ry ma­te­r­i­al and warns of le­gal con­se­quences, should there be any fail­ure to com­ply. The lawyers not­ed that con­tin­ued re­posts and shares by fol­low­ers will am­pli­fy spread of the harm­ful claims.

The de­vel­op­ment comes at a time when po­lit­i­cal ten­sions are ris­ing in the lead-up to the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, with some par­ties al­leg­ing ha­rass­ment of their can­di­dates of ac­tivists spew­ing ha­tred and vit­ri­ol both on­line and on the hus­tings.