Richard Lord

?Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning says T&T is now in a bind over the ap­point­ment of a new In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. Man­ning made this ad­mis­sion dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's. Since Feb­ru­ary last year, mem­bers of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion re­signed over a court rul­ing in a mat­ter brought against it by sacked Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley. The rul­ing said the com­mis­sion act­ed high-hand­ed in the mat­ter. About three months lat­er, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards ap­point­ed new com­mis­sion­ers, led by Fr Hen­ry Charles but with­in ten days, all com­mis­sion­ers re­signed for var­i­ous rea­sons.

Ear­li­er this week, chair­man of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) Vic­tor Hart called on Pres­i­dent Richards to move quick­ly to ap­point a new In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, as it was al­most one year since the com­mis­sion has been non-ex­is­tent. Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day on Wednes­day said Pres­i­dent Richards should al­so move to ap­point the new com­mis­sion soon. Ques­tioned about the pro­longed de­lay in ap­point­ing a new In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, Man­ning said: "The Pres­i­dent and I have been in con­stant dis­cus­sion on this mat­ter. "What has to be un­der­stood is that there are many cit­i­zens of our coun­try who are el­i­gi­ble to serve on boards and who choose not to do so pre­cise­ly be­cause of the re­quire­ments of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion," he said.

"We are in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion, and left to the Gov­ern­ment, we would have mod­i­fied the leg­is­la­tion a long time ago but to do that re­quires a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty which is not now forth­com­ing. So we are in a bind." Man­ning said many cit­i­zens would like to serve on a strong In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion but "not in these (ex­ist­ing) cir­cum­stances...And that's the re­al­i­ty." When asked if he would have pre­ferred a dif­fer­ent lead­er­ship in the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to se­cure the re­quired leg­isla­tive sup­port to amend the In­tegri­ty leg­is­la­tion, Man­ning opt­ed, in­stead, to com­ment on a PNM meet­ing sched­uled for Sat­ur­day.

He was al­so asked to re­spond to Richards' ad­dress to the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day, in which he ex­pressed con­cern about the con­tro­ver­sial prop­er­ty tax leg­is­la­tion, gov­er­nance in T&T and the need to in­crease pen­sions for re­tired pub­lic ser­vants. Man­ning said it would be im­prop­er for him to com­ment on the re­marks of the Pres­i­dent. He said the Pres­i­dent was above the cut and thrust of pol­i­tics and noth­ing that the Gov­ern­ment or any­body does should try to bring the Pres­i­dent in­to that are­na. The Prime Min­is­ter said: "The Pres­i­dent has spo­ken. It is his right. So be it. Let's move on."