Gail Alexan­der

For­mer min­is­ter Mary King has said the man­ner in which re­cent al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against her and her fam­i­ly were dealt with was un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and sev­er­al al­le­ga­tions "will be chal­lenged in the ap­pro­pri­ate fo­ra in due course."She is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day, through her lawyer Dana See­ta­hal SC, hint­ing at fur­ther ac­tion in the is­sue.She thanked the Gov­ern­ment for her pre­vi­ous ap­point­ment and wished her suc­ces­sor, Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie, well.King was fired from the post of Plan­ning Min­is­ter last week by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for act­ing "im­prop­er­ly" con­cern­ing the award of a $100,000 con­tract from the Plan­ning Min­istry to a King fam­i­ly firm.

It is al­leged that King failed to dis­close her in­ter­est in the firm, among oth­er things.The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion be­gan prob­ing the is­sue last week, in­ter­view­ing min­istry staff and will con­tin­ue this week.Fol­low­ing re­cent re­ports Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ments on the is­sue had "gaps", Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­nied King's claims she (the PM) had okayed the con­tract and re­ferred ques­tions to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.Yes­ter­day, King, in her state­ment,through See­ta­hal, said:

"The events which have tran­spired dur­ing the course of the last ten days have left me and my fam­i­ly with feel­ings of deep sad­ness and dis­ap­point­ment."My sad­ness stems from the fact that I have been re­placed from the po­si­tion of Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs, a charge to which I gave my most loy­al and de­vot­ed at­ten­tion over the past 12 months and the cir­cum­stances in which they oc­curred."

King added: "Up­on re­flec­tion, I be­lieve that the man­ner in which the al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against me and my fam­i­ly were dealt with was un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic."These sev­er­al al­le­ga­tions will be chal­lenged in the ap­pro­pri­ate fo­ra in due course."I want to em­phat­i­cal­ly say that I nev­er know­ing­ly act­ed im­prop­er­ly dur­ing my tenure as min­is­ter."My un­der­stand­ing is that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched and there­fore I feel it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate for me to com­ment fur­ther on these mat­ters at this time."King added: "The dis­ap­point­ment is that I am now un­able to serve the peo­ple of my coun­try at that lev­el with which I had been graced and to which I had ful­ly com­mit­ted my­self.

"This, how­ev­er, does not mean that I will not con­tin­ue to serve this coun­try in the sev­er­al ca­pac­i­ties that I have done in the past and am ca­pa­ble of do­ing in the fu­ture."...Rest as­sured that I re­main com­mit­ted to serve the peo­ple of Trinidad."King al­so said: "My deep and sin­cere ap­pre­ci­a­tion is al­so ex­tend­ed to the staff of the min­istry and my for­mer min­is­te­r­i­al col­leagues for their co-op­er­a­tion and as­sis­tance dur­ing my short but in­sight­ful tenure as min­is­ter."To all those who have sup­port­ed me, ex­pressed their con­fi­dence in me and ral­lied around me and my fam­i­ly dur­ing this tur­bu­lent pe­ri­od I ex­press my grat­i­tude."

Tewarie swornin as sen­a­tor

New Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie was sworn in yes­ter­day as a Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor, re­plac­ing for­mer sen­a­tor/min­is­ter Mary Kath­leen King.At yes­ter­day's sen­ate, act­ing Sen­ate pres­i­dent Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit, read out the re­vo­ca­tion of King's ap­point­ment which was done by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards last week when Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar fired King.