st vincent and the grenadines - PM threatens to sue TV station, demands apology

KINGSTOWN, St Vincent (CMC):

A lawyer for Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves has demanded that SVG TV, the nation's leading television station, along with Opposition Leader Arnhim Eustace and his New Democratic Party (NDP), apologise and pay him damages and legal cost or be sued for a programme broadcast by the station on Tuesday, December 7.

Margaret Parsons, a Vincentian-Canadian human-rights lawyer, details in the video an alleged sexual assault on her by Gonsalves six or seven year ago.

In the video, which is also circulated on YouTube, Parsons said that the alleged incident occurred at the Office of the Prime Minister in Kingstown when she went to discuss human-rights issues with him during the Constitution review exercise.

In March 2008, Parsons instituted private criminal proceedings in St Vincent against Gonsalves but the director of public prosecutions discontinued the inquiry for a lack of evidence. Parsons' lawyers did not challenge the DPP's ruling.

Gonsalves' lawyer, Grahame Bollers, in a letter to SVG TV, Eustace, and the NDP, said that while Parsons had said that she came forward to support the policewoman, she did not say that she was aggrieved because Gonsalves did not aid her in purchasing a property from the National Commercial Bank on Union Island.

He said the video is "clearly an NDP-sponsored distraction intended to draw attention away from their state of unreadiness" ahead of the general elections next Monday, December 13.