Ger­ard Best

Fol­low­ing is the full text of the re­lease from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, an­nounc­ing her de­ci­sion to fire Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, for­mer Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple.

While I was over­seas at­tend­ing a fu­ner­al of a fam­i­ly frien­dI re­ceived re­ports of an in­ci­dent con­cern­ing the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, Dr.Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh.

Up­on my re­turn I re­quest­ed re­ports from the said Min­is­ter and the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties. Hav­ing read these re­ports and af­ter meet­ing with the Min­is­ter I have ar­rived at a de­ci­sion on the way for­ward.

All my con­sid­er­a­tions are char­ac­ter dri­ven. I hold no brief for any man or woman save the greater pub­lic in­ter­est. I am al­ways aware of the high­er ex­pec­ta­tion up­on which this gov­ern­ment was elect­ed and the im­mense re­spon­si­bil­i­ty each of us has to up­hold pub­lic trust in all we do every sin­gle day of our lives. It is not a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty we can choose to have one day and lose the next.

I am re­mind­ed of Gand­hi's iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of one of sev­en so­cial sins as be­ing "pol­i­tics with­out prin­ci­ple." I have in­sist­ed from the mo­ment we took of­fice that every­one of us must dis­play a sound char­ac­ter of pub­lic in­tegri­ty, fair­ness, hu­mil­i­ty, com­pas­sion and hu­man dig­ni­ty. No man, nor woman for that mat­ter, has been al­lowed nor will be per­mit­ted to de­vi­ate from the very prin­ci­ples up­on which we were elect­ed by the peo­ple in­to of­fice.

I know there will be ar­gu­ments put for­ward by some as to what was con­doned in the past ad­min­is­tra­tion to al­low for con­ti­nu­ity but I dis­agree. There must be no com­pro­mise on in­tegri­ty, no al­lowance for ar­ro­gance, no room for vi­o­la­tion of mu­tu­al re­spect; there will be no sac­ri­fice of our val­ues on the al­tar of po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy. Re­gard­less of whether the de­ci­sions I take hurt me po­lit­i­cal­ly or not, I have the strength and courage and in­de­pen­dence of mind to mea­sure every tough de­ci­sion on the ba­sis of what is right and just.

As I have al­ways said, re­gard­less of the con­se­quences, I re­main re­solved to do the right thing be­cause it is the right thing to do. My de­ci­sions in the past demon­strate this con­sis­ten­cy re­gard­less of whether you are in my Cab­i­net or not. No one is ex­empt from the mea­sure of val­ue based lead­er­ship.

In the cir­cum­stances,I have ad­vised the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, His Ex­cel­len­cy, Jus­tice An­tho­ny Car­mona, to re­voke the ap­point­ment of the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ing­hof the Prime Min­is­ter.