Gail Alexan­der

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) to which for­mer min­is­ter Mary King be­longs has called for the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to in­ter­vene and launch a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to King's al­leged wrong­do­ing. COP chair­man Joseph Toney con­firmed this af­ter a meet­ing of the 15-mem­ber COP ex­ec­u­tive with King yes­ter­day. COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an was ab­sent be­cause of busi­ness, Toney said. He said the 11 am meet­ing was held at COP's Char­lieville of­fice for King to give her views to her par­ty. King was ac­com­pa­nied by her hus­band, Dr St Clair King. On Mon­day, be­fore the news of re­vo­ca­tion of King's ap­point­ment broke, COP's ex­ec­u­tive which dis­cussed the mat­ter on Mon­day, had stat­ed that the com­mis­sion should probe the is­sue.

COP had sug­gest­ed that King should "stand down" from the port­fo­lio, pend­ing the out­come of the re­view. COP al­so stat­ed that that po­si­tion had been con­veyed to the Prime Min­is­ter.

Yes­ter­day, af­ter re­vo­ca­tion of King's ap­point­ment, COP again called for In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in­ter­ven­tion.

"This is not a sit­u­a­tion of which COP is proud...It's not a pleas­ant thing to have some­one's ap­point­ment re­voked," Toney said. "We spoke at length with Mrs King to­day, she gave her views both on the is­sue and the Ex­press ar­ti­cle which dealt with it. "We feel in the cir­cum­stances, it's a mat­ter which the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion should look in­to. "Of course, Mrs King feels she has not done any­thing wrong and we felt, giv­en her strong views on that ground, it's a mat­ter for the com­mis­sion to han­dle. "We'd want to hear what the com­mis­sion has to say on this...We haven't ar­rived at any con­clu­sion whether she is guilty or in­no­cent.

"We asked her many ques­tions and she pro­duced doc­u­ments to sup­port what she said."

Toney said King re­mained a COP mem­ber. Yes­ter­day, COP MP Anil Roberts, who had called on King to re­sign, said:

"It's in­deed a sad day that it had to come to this, es­pe­cial­ly for some­body of the cal­i­bre of Mrs King who has al­ways cham­pi­oned the cause of trans­paren­cy, pro­pri­ety, ac­count­abil­i­ty and in­tegri­ty." "It baf­fles me to un­der­stand how some­one of her stature could make such a ba­sic ABC mis­take on non-dis­clo­sure, be­ing present at the open­ing of bids and ap­point­ing a per­son­al as­sis­tant on an eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee," he said.

"It's al­so a sad day for politi­cians and peo­ple who try to serve...We, my­self in­clud­ed, must a take les­son from this and nev­er get ar­ro­gant, over-con­fi­dent or lax in any way. "We must en­sure the awe­some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on our shoul­ders, in­clud­ing to pro­tect the pub­lic purse. Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor Patrick Wat­son, who knows both King and her hus­band well, said be­fore yes­ter­day's Sen­ate:

"We're (COP) not very hap­py, we view our­selves as a cham­pi­on of an­ti-cor­rup­tion.

"If some­one has been ac­cused of im­prop­er be­hav­iour in of­fice, we feel the per­son should re­sign and that's what we call for," he said. Wat­son said he had great re­gard for Pro­fes­sor St Clair King's work at UWI, and that has not changed."