Portia Demands Apology From Holness Over Nomination Day Comment Or Else …

Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller has accused Opposition Leader Andrew Holness of defam­ing her on Nomination Day and has writ­ten to

him demand­ing an apology.

The let­ter states that if there is no apol­o­gy with­in the next three days, then Simpson Miller will insti­tute legal pro­ceed­ings against Holness. The Prime Minister con­tends that the com­ments have low­ered her in the esti­ma­tion of right-think­ing mem­bers of soci­ety. Attorney-at-law Bert Samuels of the firm Knight, Junor & Samuels is han­dling the case. The Prime Minister says the defama­tion against her took place in a media inter­view. “Be advised that in an inter­view with mem­bers of the media in your con­stituen­cy on Tuesday the 9^th February 2016, Nomination Day your com­ments con­tained alle­ga­tions that were most defam­a­to­ry of our client, ” the let­ter stated.

“On that occa­sion, words were used and pub­lished on Television Jamaica’s 7 p.m news­cast on the said Tuesday the 9^th February, 2016 which tend­ed to injure, degrade and dis­cred­it the char­ac­ter of our client, expos­ing her to hatred, con­tempt and ridicule and which there­fore tend­ed to low­er her in the esti­ma­tion of right-think­ing mem­bers of soci­ety. “It is our view that ordi­nary, intel­li­gent and unbi­ased per­sons, with the ordi­nary person’s gen­er­al knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence of world­ly affairs would be like­ly to under­stand those words as con­vey­ing that our client was involved in acts cal­cu­lat­ed to deceive or swin­dle the pub­lic. “The pur­pose of this let­ter is to demand that a suit­ably word­ed apol­o­gy, approved by our client be pub­lished on Television Jamaica , in the Jamaica Observer and The Gleaner and that our client be paid dam­ages com­men­su­rate with her sta­tion in life local­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly, along with his legal costs. The fre­quen­cy of these pub­li­ca­tions must also be approved by our client.”

However, Samuels say such apol­o­gy will not auto­mat­i­cal­ly absolve Holness from an oblig­a­tion to pay dam­ages to his client.Samuels says the let­ter was deliv­ered at 12.41 pm at the Jamaica Labour Party head­quar­ters. Efforts to reach Holness for a com­ment were not suc­cess­ful as calls to his phone went unan­swered and he did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to text mes­sages. Portia Demands Apology From Holness Over Nomination Day Comment Or Else …