Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

No apol­o­gy. That is the po­si­tion tak­en by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­gard­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Camille Robin­son-Reg­is’ call for an apol­o­gy on state­ments made by Per­sad-Bisses­sar about the AG’s cer­tifi­cate to prac­tice law and oth­er mat­ters.

And Robin­son-Reg­is’ re­sponse to a query by Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day on Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­fusal was, “My at­tor­neys are deal­ing with this.”

The UNC is­sued a state­ment on the is­sue yes­ter­day af­ter Chris Ho­sein Law Of­fices, at­tor­neys for Per­sad-Bisses­sar, re­spond­ed to a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to her by Robin­son-Reg­is’ at­tor­ney, An­tho­ny Man­wah, claim­ing dam­ages for defama­tion and an apol­o­gy.

Robin­son-Reg­is is seek­ing $4 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion and a full re­trac­tion and apol­o­gy for al­leged defam­a­to­ry state­ments by Per­sad-Bisses­sar at a March 17 UNC meet­ing.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had raised con­cerns, among oth­er mat­ters, about a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion and that Robin­son-Reg­is al­leged­ly “was not the hold­er” of a cur­rent prac­tis­ing cer­tifi­cate from the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T.

Robin­son-Reg­is’ at­tor­ney ini­ti­at­ed defama­tion pro­ceed­ings on March 28, stat­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­marks were “un­de­ni­ably defam­a­to­ry” and “false­ly and ma­li­cious­ly” made with the in­tent to dam­age Robin­son-Reg­is’ rep­u­ta­tion, per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, and the state­ments had sig­nif­i­cant­ly tar­nished the AG’s good name and brought her in­to dis­re­pute, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the lead-up to the gen­er­al elec­tion.

A call was al­so made for the video with the re­marks to be amend­ed to re­move the defam­a­to­ry con­tent. If no sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sponse was re­ceived with­in 28 days, le­gal ac­tion was threat­ened, and the case was to be “ex­pe­di­tious­ly pros­e­cut­ed,” Man­wah had stat­ed.

In yes­ter­day’s re­sponse, Per­sad Bisses­sar’s at­tor­neys sub­mit­ted a 44-point re­ply which con­clud­ed, “In all of the cir­cum­stances and about the mat­ters men­tioned above, our client de­nies every al­le­ga­tion that she has de­famed your client and/or caused loss or dam­age to her rep­u­ta­tion.

“Our client wish­es to re­mind your client that she will not be daunt­ed by any threats of le­gal ac­tion by your client, in her per­son­al ca­pac­i­ty or in your client’s of­fi­cial ca­pac­i­ty as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. Our client will con­tin­ue to raise mat­ters of con­cern to the cit­i­zens of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go in the pub­lic do­main, as is her du­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“In all the cir­cum­stances, your client’s spu­ri­ous and spec­u­la­tive claim is de­nied, and our client shall not apol­o­gise for any of the state­ments you have com­plained about.”

They al­so coun­tered that Per­sad-Bisses­sar “was en­tire­ly jus­ti­fied in mak­ing those state­ments, which were fair com­ments in mat­ters of pub­lic in­ter­est” and that any per­son un­der po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion could be ar­rest­ed and charged at any time, the state­ment in­di­cat­ed. They ques­tioned whether Robin­son-Reg­is made the lit­i­ga­tion threat in her of­fi­cial ca­pac­i­ty as AG, “since her at­tor­ney’s pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter ap­pears to sug­gest that it was.”