Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has threat­ened to sue Arou­ca/Lopinot MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les for defama­tion. 

In a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter is­sued yes­ter­day, Sturge’s lawyers led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, claimed that Gon­za­les de­famed their client while de­liv­er­ing an ad­dress at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) pub­lic meet­ing in San Juan, last Wednes­day. 

While Gon­za­les’ ex­act com­ments can­not be re­peat­ed, as they may be even­tu­al­ly found to be defam­a­to­ry, he es­sen­tial­ly sug­gest­ed that Sturge, who serves as To­co/San­gre Grande MP, was un­fit for of­fice and ques­tioned his cam­paign fi­nanc­ing. 

In the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, at­tor­ney Jared Ja­groo said that the al­le­ga­tions were false, reck­less and whol­ly un­jus­ti­fied. 

“The fact that our client prac­tised as a crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney and rep­re­sent­ed per­sons ac­cused of crim­i­nal of­fences does not, and can­not, rea­son­ably sup­port any in­fer­ence that he has prof­it­ed from crim­i­nal con­duct or is as­so­ci­at­ed with crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty,” Ja­groo said. 

“Such a propo­si­tion is fun­da­men­tal­ly in­con­sis­tent with the rule of law, the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and the role per­formed by at­tor­neys-at-law with­in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice,” he added. 

Ja­groo claimed that the al­le­ga­tions caused se­ri­ous dam­age to Sturge’s rep­u­ta­tion. 

“To ac­cuse the present sit­ting Min­is­ter of De­fence of at­tain­ing of­fice through the sup­port of drug traf­fick­ers and drug deal­ers is among the gravest al­le­ga­tions ca­pa­ble of be­ing made against a pub­lic of­fi­cial,” he said. 

“More­over, giv­en your re­cent tenure as a Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty of the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der which gang and drug-re­lat­ed mur­ders/crime reached a record high, it is iron­ic that you would seek to com­plain about drug traf­fick­ers and drug deal­ers who pros­pered and flour­ished un­der the ad­min­is­tra­tion which you were a part of,” he added. 

Ja­groo not­ed that the al­le­ga­tions were wide­ly shared as the event was live-streamed on so­cial me­dia and re­ceived 557 in­ter­ac­tions, 631 com­ments and 163 shares by mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Ja­groo gave Gon­za­les 14 days in which to with­draw the al­le­ga­tions and is­sue a full and un­equiv­o­cal apol­o­gy. 

In the event that Gon­za­les is con­test­ing the defama­tion claim, Ja­groo called on him to iden­ti­fy the sources of his al­le­ga­tions and pro­vide ev­i­dence prov­ing such. 

He said that Sturge would file a law­suit seek­ing sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion if he does not re­ceive a sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sponse by the dead­line. 

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Gon­za­les said he had not re­ceived the let­ter from Sturge’s le­gal team.

Sturge is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Seth Rams­den.