Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and for­mer FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er is go­ing af­ter for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, over state­ments he (Row­ley) made about him on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form. Warn­er is de­mand­ing that Row­ley not on­ly apol­o­gise but re­tract the state­ments, or he will face a law­suit.

In a six-page let­ter dat­ed April 22, Warn­er’s at­tor­ney Anil Maraj claimed Row­ley’s state­ments have caused se­ri­ous rep­u­ta­tion­al harm dur­ing the on­go­ing Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign­ing. Row­ley has been giv­en 14 days to re­spond.

Warn­er’s list of de­mands in­clud­ed an im­me­di­ate ceas­ing of any fur­ther defam­a­to­ry state­ments, a full and un­equiv­o­cal pub­lic re­trac­tion and apol­o­gy in terms to be agreed; a writ­ten un­der­tak­ing not to re­peat these or sim­i­lar al­le­ga­tions; and com­pen­sa­tion for the se­ri­ous dam­age to Warn­er’s rep­u­ta­tion.

Warn­er said Row­ley false­ly ac­cused him of be­ing an “in­ter­na­tion­al scamp” dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal ral­ly on April 16. Row­ley fur­ther al­leged that Warn­er was “hid­ing from court.”

“Your state­ments fall clear­ly with­in the most se­ri­ous cat­e­go­ry, as they as­sert as es­tab­lished facts that Mr Warn­er has been con­vict­ed and is evad­ing jus­tice. You did not present these as mat­ters for in­ves­ti­ga­tion or as grounds for rea­son­able sus­pi­cion,” Maraj said.

He added: “Politi­cians speak­ing pub­licly must ob­serve high stan­dards of ac­cu­ra­cy and fair­ness, since the pub­lic need to know the true po­si­tion and are in­evitably in­flu­enced by what is said. The right to free ex­pres­sion in po­lit­i­cal mat­ters, while im­por­tant, is not un­lim­it­ed. Your cat­e­gor­i­cal as­ser­tions of crim­i­nal con­vic­tion and eva­sion of jus­tice were pre­sent­ed as es­tab­lished facts with no qual­i­fi­ca­tion. They went far be­yond le­git­i­mate po­lit­i­cal dis­course and can­not be jus­ti­fied as fair com­ment or hon­est opin­ion, as they lack the nec­es­sary fac­tu­al foun­da­tion.”

Maraj said the state­ments were made to se­cure po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage in cir­cum­stances where Row­ley would have known Warn­er would not have had the abil­i­ty to vin­di­cate his rep­u­ta­tion in time to un­do the dam­age be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Maraj added that while the law recog­nis­es that po­lit­i­cal de­bate is fun­da­men­tal to democ­ra­cy, politi­cians are en­ti­tled to re­spond ro­bust­ly to crit­i­cism. He said politi­cians are af­ford­ed some lat­i­tude in po­lit­i­cal dis­course, which does not ex­tend to mak­ing false state­ments. Ref­er­enc­ing a Privy Coun­cil rul­ing, he said in a free de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety, those who hold of­fice in gov­ern­ment and who are re­spon­si­ble for pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion must al­ways be open to crit­i­cism and any at­tempt to sti­fle or fet­ter such crit­i­cism amounts to po­lit­i­cal cen­sor­ship.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Row­ley for a com­ment but up to press time there was no re­sponse.