Sascha Wil­son

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the air must be cleared on a rel­a­tive of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's hus­band serv­ing as a mem­ber of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. A week­ly news­pa­per re­port­ed that Pro­fes­sor Ann-Marie Bisses­sar was the cousin of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's hus­band, Dr Gre­go­ry Bisses­sar. Speak­ing with re­porters at the Has­sanali Khan Memo­r­i­al Masjid, at Vic­to­ria Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, on Tues­day night, Row­ley said: "There is an is­sue that war­rants clar­i­fi­ca­tion and I say this pure­ly on the ba­sis of the re­ac­tion of the com­mis­sion to the Prime Min­is­ter's po­lit­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties, not on the ba­sis of the per­son be­ing a cousin-in-law of (Per­sad-Bisses­sar)."

He added that there were some miss­ing pieces that need­ed to be ex­am­ined be­fore one could ar­rive at a prop­er and rea­son­able con­clu­sion. Row­ley said if Bisses­sar was ap­point­ed when Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not hold her cur­rent po­si­tion or was Op­po­si­tion Leader, then there prob­a­bly would not be any dif­fi­cul­ty. He said, how­ev­er, that if Per­sad-Bisses­sar held any of those po­si­tions when Bisses­sar was ap­point­ed, then the Pres­i­dent would have con­sult­ed her on Bisses­sar's suit­abil­i­ty. "If that was done when this la­dy was ap­point­ed, then the ques­tion aris­es as to what po­si­tion the Prime Min­is­ter now took when she was con­sult­ed be­cause if you con­sult and ap­prove your cousin (in- law) to go on the com­mis­sion know­ing that you are go­ing to be in a po­si­tion where ac­tions of your ad­min­is­tra­tion or your­self could be the sub­ject of a lot of work of the com­mis­sion, we need to ex­am­ine that," Row­ley said.

He said, how­ev­er, that the re­al is­sue had to with the en­tire op­er­a­tion of the com­mis­sion. The PNM po­lit­i­cal leader al­so ex­pressed con­cern about whether the com­mis­sion re­spond­ed as a body in its Au­gust 4 let­ter to Per­sad-Bisses­sar stat­ing that they had no mat­ters in­volv­ing her. In the PM's let­ter to the com­mis­sion, Row­ley said, she re­quest­ed that her con­cern be di­rect­ed to the com­mis­sion­er who was deal­ing with the mat­ter. "I was not aware, up un­til I saw the cor­re­spon­dence...I was not aware that in­di­vid­ual com­mis­sion­ers act­ed on mat­ters of this na­ture and took po­si­tions on mat­ters of this na­ture," he said. "I thought when In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion re­spond­ed or spoke to the coun­try it was a mat­ter of the com­mis­sion." Row­ley said the ques­tion aris­ing was whether the com­mis­sion met as a body and ad­ju­di­cat­ed on the mat­ter and made a rul­ing.