De­scrib­ing for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al John Je­re­mie's threat of a defama­tion suit as friv­o­lous and an at­tempt to si­lence him, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says he will not be in­tim­i­dat­ed.
On Feb­ru­ary 15, Je­re­mie, through his firm Alexan­der, Je­re­mie & Com­pa­ny, sent Mooni­lal a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col Let­ter, alert­ing the for­mer hous­ing and ur­ban de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter of his in­tent to pur­sue re­lief for defama­tion in the High Court. The claim arose out of a Feb­ru­ary 11, 2021, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress vir­tu­al pub­lic meet­ing, when Mooni­lal spoke on al­leged cor­rup­tion on an $84 mil­lion gov­ern­ment con­tract for the pro­cure­ment of Closed Cap­tion Tele­vi­sion (CCTV) cam­eras.
Mooni­lal said, then, that John­son's Con­trol, a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny has two lo­cal part­ners for dis­tri­b­u­tion. One of those com­pa­nies is En­er­gy Dy­nam­ics, in which John Je­re­mie sits as a di­rec­tor. He said there might be two Je­re­mies. How­ev­er, he said if it was the same for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, he wants to know. He called on the Gov­ern­ment to state the ten­der­ing process used and whether Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young knew a for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment cab­i­net mem­ber was the di­rec­tor of the com­pa­ny linked to John­ston Con­trol.
In the let­ter, Alexan­der, Je­re­mie and Com­pa­ny lawyer Lau­ris­sa Pe­na said the live feed of that UNC meet­ing streamed on YouTube and 4,367 viewed it. The video re­mained ac­ces­si­ble on the web. Pe­na said on Feb­ru­ary 12 Ra­dio i95.5 FM broad­cast the defam­a­to­ry state­ment on its 12 pm news.
“The defam­a­to­ry state­ments were ut­tered ma­li­cious­ly and were de­signed to bring our client in­to odi­um and con­tempt when giv­en their or­di­nary and plain mean­ing. The plain and or­di­nary mean­ing of the state­ments made by you com­mu­ni­cate to the pub­lic that our client, as di­rec­tor of En­er­gy Dy­nam­ics Ltd, act­ed im­prop­er­ly by un­law­ful­ly procur­ing a gov­ern­ment con­tract for En­er­gy Dy­nam­ics Ltd or a com­pa­ny as­so­ci­at­ed with it in re­la­tion to the dis­tri­b­u­tion of CCTV cam­era,” Pe­na said.
She added that Mooni­lal craft­ed his state­ments to in­sin­u­ate that Je­re­mie used his in­flu­ence to cor­rupt­ly pro­cure con­tracts on be­half of his com­pa­ny.
In a re­sponse, Mooni­lal's at­tor­ney, Oropouche West MP Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, made no ad­mis­sion of defama­tion and did not ac­cept li­a­bil­i­ty. Lutch­me­di­al added that Mooni­lal does not own the rights to the YouTube video ref­er­enced in the lat­ter.
“This is an at­tempt to si­lence me. Clear­ly, it is an at­tempt to in­tim­i­date and ha­rass me, but I will have none of it. I want to alert Je­re­mie and oth­ers that they can­not use the court to duck and hide from burn­ing ques­tions in the pub­lic do­main. As an MP, I took an oath to ask those ques­tions. My lawyers have looked at it, and they are clear­ly say­ing it is friv­o­lous and a waste of time and ef­forts.
Pe­na gave Moo­nial sev­en days to re­spond to the let­ter, but Lutch­me­di­al cit­ed the Pre-Ac­tion Pro­to­col Prac­tice Di­rec­tions ac­cord­ing to the Civ­il Pro­ceed­ings Rules 1998, which stip­u­lates 14 days for a re­ply. She said she would give a full re­sponse in that time-frame. Yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal said he re­peat­ed­ly raised the CCTV cam­eras prob­lem, es­pe­cial­ly as 40 per cent of those in­stalled around the coun­try are not work­ing.
“We have con­firmed that the cam­eras that were in the vicin­i­ty of the car that so re­gret­tably and trag­i­cal­ly kid­napped An­drea Bharatt were not work­ing and could not help the po­lice im­me­di­ate­ly to go on the trail of those kid­nap­pers and mur­der­ers.”
He said that in Sep­tem­ber 2019, there was an open com­pet­i­tive bid, which the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty can­celled af­ter open­ing the of­fers.
He said the Gov­ern­ment in­formed the bid­ders that the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty would be in touch. How­ev­er, the min­istry did not con­tact any of the bid­ders. He said that in Jan­u­ary 2020, the min­istry gave half of the con­tract to John­ston Con­trol.
“The min­is­ter made this dis­clo­sure in Par­lia­ment. On­ly when he was asked, he made this dis­clo­sure. We were con­cerned that John­son Con­trol, a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny, was able to get a ten­der and win a bid when there was no com­pet­i­tive bid­ding when no lo­cal dis­trib­u­tor or im­porter of CCTV cam­eras knew of this in­ci­dent. We dis­cov­ered on the in­ter­net that it has two lo­cal link com­pa­nies, Peakes and En­er­gy Dy­nam­ics.
“All we are ask­ing is whether these com­pa­nies were in­volved. Was this their lo­cal coun­ter­part for this pur­pose? How could they get $84 mil­lion in a con­tract that was nev­er ad­ver­tised or there was nev­er a bid? There was nev­er an open com­pet­i­tive ten­der­ing. All of this is di­a­met­ri­cal­ly op­posed to the prin­ci­ples and the law of the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion.”

Young: It's a dis­rupt­ed of some peo­ple's en­joy­ment of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars

In a re­sponse to Mooni­lal's claims, Young ques­tioned whether the for­mer UNC deputy po­lit­i­cal leader had a spe­cial in­ter­est in who got the con­tract to pro­vide CCTV cam­eras. He told the Sun­day Guardian that the com­pet­i­tive ten­der process was con­duct­ed in a man­ner that dis­rupt­ed some peo­ple's en­joy­ment of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars.

“Ask Roodal Mooni­lal if he is ad­vo­cat­ing for some­one af­fect­ed by a com­pet­i­tive ten­der de­signed to pro­tect the tax­pay­ers. It is al­leged that a cer­tain sub-con­trac­tor who is in­volved in the for­mer over­priced arrange­ment is hap­py for a mouth­piece to make false and mis­lead­ing al­le­ga­tions against a process that broke up a very over­priced arrange­ment. Roodal Mooni­lal is not some­one that any­one sen­si­ble takes se­ri­ous­ly. I as­sure the civic-mind­ed and right-think­ing cit­i­zens that the com­pet­i­tive ten­der process for a new na­tion­al CCTV pro­gramme has been con­duct­ed in a man­ner that dis­rupt­ed the for­mer arrange­ments that some were en­joy­ing at law-abid­ing and tax-pay­ing cit­i­zens’ ex­pense.”