While our ed­i­to­r­i­al yes­ter­day stood firm on the po­si­tion that in her role as min­is­ter, Mary King act­ed im­prop­er­ly in not de­clar­ing her in­ter­est and re­cus­ing her­self from the en­tire bid­ding process, the mat­ter is far from be­ing closed. As stat­ed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, in­for­ma­tion on the process adopt­ed by King in the award of the Web site con­tract was passed to the Prime Min­is­ter on No­vem­ber 25, 2010. Sub­se­quent to his re­lease on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the AG told re­porters Tues­day that the in­for­ma­tion sup­plied by then Min­is­ter King was passed to him in De­cem­ber. He said he re­viewed the doc­u­ments and found the min­is­ter had act­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly in putting dis­tance be­tween her­self and the award of the con­tract.

How­ev­er, he said over the East­er pe­ri­od he had cause to re­vis­it the file sent by Mrs King, but again did not find any­thing to war­rant con­cern. Here, there­fore, was an ex­pe­ri­enced at­tor­ney who fre­quent­ly sounds his trum­pet on his ca­pa­bil­i­ty hav­ing two shots at ex­am­in­ing the doc­u­ments but found noth­ing ques­tion­able. Is it that he was not sup­plied with all of the doc­u­ments? If that be the case, did he not find the doc­u­men­ta­tion in­com­plete? And why did he not seek out fur­ther in­for­ma­tion? How come a re­porter with­out le­gal train­ing but with an in­quir­ing mind could have found in the doc­u­ments suf­fi­cient­ly ques­tion­able prac­tices to pub­lish a sto­ry out of what was in her pos­ses­sion? Too many ques­tions!

But not on­ly does the AG have ques­tions to an­swer, so too does Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

When the mat­ter was first raised in the news­pa­pers, Mary King said she had giv­en the in­for­ma­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter and her boss was sat­is­fied with her con­duct in the mat­ter. When that was raised with the Prime Min­is­ter by re­porters, she said she knew noth­ing of it, but with­in hours she dou­bled back and in a press re­lease con­demned the ac­tion of her min­is­ter. In her most re­cent com­ment on the mat­ter, the Prime Min­is­ter said she was not aware of the de­tails of what was in­volved. It is clear­ly un­ac­cept­able for the head of gov­ern­ment to plead ig­no­rance in such a sen­si­tive is­sue. Here is Min­is­ter King bring­ing to the at­ten­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter that her (King's) ac­tions could raise ques­tions for the Gov­ern­ment, and she (the Prime Min­is­ter) think­ing the mat­ter se­ri­ous enough to re­fer it to her At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and then months lat­er say­ing she was not aware of the de­tails.

The buck on this is­sue stops with the head of Gov­ern­ment. But there are even more ques­tions which need to be probed and an­swers giv­en to the pub­lic. Why was in­for­ma­tion on the con­tract leaked to the jour­nal­ist and by whom and with what in­ten­tion? The cyn­ics would want to know if the leak took place to al­low the Gov­ern­ment the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re-en­ter the award of the con­tract as if it were hear­ing of it for the first time. Or per­haps it was leaked by some­one who saw Gov­ern­ment do­ing noth­ing on this very vis­i­ble breach of eth­i­cal prac­tice and so want­ed the na­tion to know.

There must al­so be ques­tions about the seem­ing ea­ger­ness of Min­is­ter Anil Roberts to slam his min­is­te­r­i­al col­league, and this at the mo­ment that his Prime Min­is­ter had asked the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter. Was he not pre-empt­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tions and set­ting Mary King up for the kill?

The PP cam­paigned on the ba­sis of in­tegri­ty and trans­paren­cy in pub­lic of­fice and there­fore those prin­ci­ples need now to be ex­em­pli­fied in the op­er­a­tions of the Gov­ern­ment. Noth­ing short of the whole truth is need­ed.