KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent – Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has threatened to file a lawsuit against social commentator and former speaker of Parliament, Jomo Thomas, over statements he allegedly made during a radio program in January this year.
Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves (left) and former speaker and social commentator, Jomo Thomas (File Photo)Attorney Grahame Bollers is demanding an apology from Thomas, a lawyer, warning that failure to do so would result in the lawsuit.
Bollers in a February 11 letter, which was copied to Dwight “Bing” Joseph, of Boom FM, and Ernesto Cooke, of the St. Vincent Times, said Thomas had defamed Prime Minister Gonsalves in his January 27 radio commentary.
He said the St. Vincent Times had published the alleged defamatory statement on its online publication and Gonsalves was demanding a full apology in terms to be approved by his lawyers.
Thomas, who had contested the 2015 general elections on a ticket of Gonsalves’ Unity Labour Party (ULP), was accused of defaming the prime minister while commenting about the January 24 death of Michelle Andrews, who had accused Gonsalves of sexual assault in 2008, when she was a police officer on duty at the Official Residence of the Prime Minister.
“So, summarily, without one iota of evidence or any sufficient factual matrix whatsoever, you maliciously arrived at erroneous and false conclusions, and published them, for the sole purpose and effect of causing damage to our client’s character and reputation,” Bollers said in his letter.
“You have done so, in reckless disregard of the facts and law, due to your declared, and rabid, political antipathy to our client,” he said, adding that Thomas has been repeatedly affirming his commitment to ensure the removal of Prime Minister Gonsalves from the Office of Prime Minister and the defeat of his government.
“… indeed, this has become your single-minded, public obsession,” Bollers said, adding he intends to pursue civil proceedings in the High Court against Thomas for damages and other relief, unless he issues an unequivocal public apology within seven days of the date of the letter on Boom FM in terms to be agreed upon by the PM’s lawyers.
In the letter, Bollers detailed what he said were the facts in relation to the alleged defamatory comments relating to Andrews.
“In the light of this bundle of facts, your false and malicious statements against our client are being shown to the world as reckless in the extreme and wholly unwarranted; they are evidently suffused with political malice of a venomous kind.”
Bollers said “right-thinking” people may ask “reasonable and legitimate questions”, namely:
“If Jomo Thomas held the dastardly views as expressed in his said defamatory statements about our client on Boom FM, why did he contest the 2015 general elections in St. Vincent and the Grenadines on the Unity Labour Party (ULP) ticket under our client’s leadership?
“And why did he, subsequent to Ms. Andrews’ allegations, accept our client’s invitation to be a Senator on his government’s side and our client’s offer to be Speaker of the House of Assembly?”
In August 2021, lawyers representing Gonsalves wrote to Thomas demanding half a million dollars after claiming that he had libeled their client in his weekly newspaper column, “Plain Talk”.
