Gail Alexan­der

"Hope­ful­ly we'll move on to an­swers on this scan­dal." That was Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley's view of the Prime Min­is­ter's call to move on from the Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine af­fair. He would be rais­ing fur­ther ques­tions on the is­sue in Par­lia­ment to­mor­row as part of a mo­tion on the SIA which he tabled last month.

Say­ing the mat­ter was an "an­tic­i­pat­ed scan­dal" Row­ley added: "When I filed the mo­tion on the SIA, fol­low­ing dis­clo­sures about wire-tap­ping, I an­tic­i­pat­ed this would hap­pen and it has played out even worse than I ex­pect­ed. So this mo­tion was very for­tu­itous."

The mo­tion states that where­as the SIA may have been il­le­gal­ly col­lect­ing da­ta of an un­spec­i­fied na­ture for years and Par­lia­ment rec­ti­fied the sit­u­a­tion, Gov­ern­ment had failed to treat with the body of col­lect­ed in­for­ma­tion. On the PM's queries why ques­tions were not asked about the agen­cies be­fore, Row­ley said:

"...Be­cause they were elect­ed on May 24 to im­prove the sit­u­a­tion ... not so? Not to do worse than the PNM." (GA)