PM threatens to sue Jomo Thomas over his commentaries — again

A lawyer for Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves has written to social commentator Jomo Thomas to demand that he apologise or be sued for comments that he allegedly made on his “Plain Talk” commentary on Boom FM.

In the Feb. 11 letter, copied to Mr. Dwight “Bing” Joseph, of Boom FM, and Ernesto Cooke, of St. Vincent Times, Grahame Bollers accused Thomas of defaming the PM in his Jan. 27 radio commentary.

He said Cooke has republished the alleged defamatory statement on his online publication and Gonsalves was demanding each from the radio station and website singly a full apology in terms to be approved by his lawyers.

Thomas, a lawyer and candidate for Gonsalves’ Unity Labour Party (ULP) in the 2015 general election, was accused of defaming Gonsalves while commenting about the Jan. 24 death of Michelle Andrews, who has 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 Thomas has been repeatedly affirming his commitment to ensure the removal of Gonsalves from the Office of Prime Minister and the defeat of his government.

“… indeed, this has become your single-minded, public obsession,” Bollers said and gave his interpretation of Thomas’ alleged comments, which he said were defamatory of the PM.

Bollers said Gonsalves 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.

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?

And further, given that since 2020, when you acceded to our client’s demand that you resign as Speaker of the House, have you not allowed yourself to be consumed by an unbounded bitterness towards him, as reflected in your defamation of him?”

The claim that Gonsalves had demanded that Thomas resign as Speaker of the House of Assembly is in contrast to the facts in the public domain.

Thomas had remained a critic of the Gonsalves administration even as he was appointed Speaker of the House of Assembly after the 2015 polls, in which he fell 118 votes shy of winning the South Leeward seat, the party’s best performance there since it lost the seat to the opposition New Democratic Party in 2010.

On Oct. 29, 2019, Thomas announced that he had resigned as a member of the ULP and would quit as Speaker of the House of Assembly by early 2020.

He also announced that he had no intention of offering himself as a candidate in the next general elections.

His comments had come one day after Gonsalves had said that general elections would be held by the end of 2020, ahead of the March 2021 constitutional deadline.

Thomas had said he had come to his decisions primarily because “the time, the energy, the money, the effort, cannot be properly justified, considering the current state of play in the party.

“Consequently, to allow for the ease of transition and to allow for a sense of clarity to prevail, particularly among the long-suffering and neglected people of South Leeward, I formally remove myself as caretaker for the constituency so that others who may desire to represent can move forward,” he had told a press conference in Kingstown.

“I think these decisions are important because they allow me to do a number of things. They allow me to free myself up from any strictures I may have, to say and do what I want to so as the year 2020 rolls in,” Thomas had said.

Then, on Jan. 22, 2020, Thomas informed Parliament of his intention to quit as speaker.

“Just to say that my time in his chair is coming to an end. I am not so sure how much — I did say in an October 29th press conference that I would be gone by the first quarter of 2020. We are rapidly approaching that time,” Thomas said during the period reserved for announcements by the speaker.

Speaking immediately after Thomas — during the period for statements by ministers — Gonsalves had said that whenever Thomas demits office, “we will have to pay the usual respect for someone who has served with us.

“I just want to indicate that. I don’t know what your timetable is but I say that in relation to your own statement in acknowledgement of your contribution,” the prime minister had said, adding that he did not rise to make a statement by a minister on the speaker’s announcement.

“I just want to make the comment in the light of your own announcement,” Gonsalves had said.

After becoming speaker, Thomas had been the subject of intense criticism by some supporters of the ULP, including on its own radio station.”

In August 2021, lawyers representing Gonsalves wrote to Thomas demanding half a million dollars in damages after claiming that he had libelled their client in his weekly newspaper column, “Plain Talk”.

Gonsalves’ lawyers claimed that in his Aug. 13, 2021 column in The Vincentian newspaper, Thomas “falsely and maliciously published” an article that contained “defamatory words”.

The column in question dealt with the protest outside the Parliament on Aug. 5, 2021, when Gonsalves was hit on the head with a missile and had to be flown to Barbados for further medical treatment.

Jomo Thomas had promised “a fulsome and vigorous defence”.

He, however, said on his radio show that in keeping with his lawyer’s advice he did not want to “talk about the letter too much but you all can read the column. The column is called ‘Fool’s gold, nation’s lost’”.