Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der has re­ject­ed ac­cu­sa­tions that his re­cent so­cial me­dia at­tack on ac­tivist Suzette Louwe was deroga­to­ry or amount­ed to an at­tack on women, even as crit­i­cism of his con­duct con­tin­ues to in­ten­si­fy.

The lat­est de­vel­op­ment comes amid an es­ca­lat­ing pub­lic feud be­tween Alexan­der and the so­cial me­dia ac­tivist, which has now sparked de­bate over the stan­dards ex­pect­ed of pub­lic of­fice hold­ers.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Alexan­der de­nied his com­ments crossed the line from po­lit­i­cal crit­i­cism to per­son­al at­tacks, or that they were in­ap­pro­pri­ate for a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter.