Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has been giv­en a sev­en-day ex­ten­sion to re­spond to Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter.

Row­ley’s lawyer, Adana Bain, work­ing along­side Michael Quam­i­na SC, was giv­en the ex­tra time by Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lawyer, Sad­dam Ho­sein, yes­ter­day, af­ter Bain sought ex­tra time to gath­er in­for­ma­tion to mount a de­fence on be­half of the PM.

Bain ini­tial­ly re­vealed a sig­nif­i­cant flaw in Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter ear­ly yes­ter­day, say­ing it did not en­close any con­crete ev­i­dence, such as record­ings, videos, or a com­pre­hen­sive pre­sen­ta­tion from the PNM Fam­i­ly Day event in To­co on April 30, where Row­ley is al­leged to have made defam­a­to­ry state­ments against Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar sent the le­gal let­ter to Dr Row­ley on May 4 and gave him a mere sev­en days to re­spond.

The let­ter sought jus­tice for the “state­ments that were made and pub­lished about our client, which were con­strued to mean that our client, as the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, and a for­mer Prime Min­is­ter of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, act­ed ir­re­spon­si­bly, im­prop­er­ly, neg­li­gent­ly, reck­less­ly, and de­spi­ca­bly by as­so­ci­at­ing her with of­fen­sive and racial­ly di­vi­sive re­marks.”

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, Bain re­spond­ed, say­ing, “The full pre­sen­ta­tion, by de­f­i­n­i­tion, would en­com­pass not on­ly the spe­cif­ic words you have com­plained about in your let­ter but much more. We thus write to in­quire whether you pos­sess any record­ings that can be made avail­able to us as part of the pre-ac­tion pro­to­cols.”

How­ev­er, in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Ho­sein coun­tered, “As you have un­doubt­ed­ly ob­served, the link to the rel­e­vant seg­ment of your client’s defam­a­to­ry speech was pro­vid­ed in para­graph 4 of our let­ter dat­ed May 4, 2023. More­over, nu­mer­ous news­pa­per ar­ti­cles faith­ful­ly re­port­ed on his con­tri­bu­tion, and your client did not re­fute or cor­rect these me­dia re­ports. In fact, the CNC3 news re­port ver­i­fies that he in­deed ut­tered the defam­a­to­ry words in ques­tion. We have no oblig­a­tion to pro­vide your client with any­thing more than what has al­ready been pro­vid­ed.”

Bain, not­ing the com­plex­i­ty of build­ing a ro­bust de­fence against the slan­der claims, em­pha­sised the need to thor­ough­ly con­sult with Dr Row­ley. Con­se­quent­ly, she as­sert­ed that they re­quired a rea­son­able pe­ri­od of 28 days from the date of the let­ter to re­spond com­pre­hen­sive­ly.

Dis­miss­ing Bain’s re­quest as a mere de­lay tac­tic, Hos­sein is­sued a stern ul­ti­ma­tum, grant­i­ng Dr Row­ley 14 days from the re­ceipt of the let­ter to pro­vide a re­sponse.