Richard Lord

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan says the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion's in­tegri­ty will be un­der ques­tion if its chair­man, Dr Er­ic St Cyr, did not re­cuse him­self from the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the probe against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds filed a mat­ter for in­ves­ti­ga­tion against the Prime Min­is­ter un­der Sec­tion 27 (1) of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act. That mat­ter re­lat­ed to the al­leged ac­cep­tance of a gift by the Prime Min­is­ter in the form of hous­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion last year.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­mit­ted to stay­ing at the res­i­dence of her friend and busi­ness­man Ralph Gopaul at Pasea in Tu­na­puna.Gopaul was the pre­ferred bid­der for a $40 mil­lion con­tract to trans­port gas. St Cyr sub­se­quent­ly said Per­sad-Bisses­sar should have stayed at a ho­tel in­stead of the Gopaul's home. Re­spond­ing to ques­tions dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair, Ram­lo­gan stressed that if St Cyr re­fus­es to re­cuse him­self from the mat­ter, "that would most cer­tain­ly cre­ate a vir­tu­al con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis be­cause there would be lit­i­ga­tion that could en­sue.

"Just think of what that will do to our coun­try and our con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments, " he said. Ram­lo­gan said one of the pos­si­ble out­come would be that Per­sad-Bisses­sar would have to seek ju­di­cial re­view of a de­ci­sion of the chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. "The prop­er thing to do would be for the chair­man to re­cuse him­self from this mat­ter be­cause he will com­pro­mise the in­tegri­ty of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and the in­tegri­ty of the process," he said. "Whichev­er way he goes, it will open the com­mis­sion up to le­git­i­mate and jus­ti­fi­able crit­i­cism about how the com­mis­sion con­duct­ed its own in­ves­ti­ga­tion and de­lib­er­a­tions in this mat­ter."

Ram­lo­gan pre­sent­ed the ad­vice of four promi­nent at­tor­neys on mat­ters re­lat­ing to the is­sue. They were for­mer Law As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dents Mar­tin Daly, SC, and Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, Alan New­man, QC, and Sir Fen­ton Ram­sa­hoye. The gen­er­al con­sen­sus from the at­tor­neys were that the PM had done no wrong and breached no law with re­spect to her de­ci­sion to stay at the home of the Gopauls. Three of the at­tor­neys ex­pressed con­cern over St Cyr's com­ment, but Mar­tineau said while St Cyr should have not said any­thing on the mat­ter, he did not dis­play any bias.

Mar­tineau said he did not think St Cyr should re­cuse him­self from the mat­ter. Ram­lo­gan lat­er said the at­tor­neys were to be paid for their ad­vice, but he could not give the to­tal cost. He said it would be made pub­lic in due course. Ram­lo­gan said moves to have the PM in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion was an act of po­lit­i­cal mis­chief by those op­posed to her. He said the ac­tions "ap­pear to be a con­cert­ed at­tempt to tar­nish the PM."

He said it was the cul­ture of cit­i­zens of this coun­try to overnight by a close friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber.

And Ram­lo­gan said he would re­ceive and study the re­port of a com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the se­lec­tion of Gopaul's com­pa­ny as the pre­ferred bid­der for the $40 mil­lion trans­port con­tract. He said he was ex­pect­ed to make a state­ment on the mat­ter by Thurs­day. He said the com­plaint against the Prime Min­is­ter was one of po­lit­i­cal hypocrisy, based on what hap­pened un­der the for­mer Patrick Man­ning regime, where the then prime min­is­ter ac­cept­ed a ride on a Rep­sol jet while the com­pa­ny was bid­ding for a ma­jor en­er­gy con­tract in T&T. "What is hap­pen­ing here pales in­to in­signif­i­cance, there is cer­tain­ly no com­par­i­son," Ram­lo­gan said.