Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona is as­sur­ing cit­i­zens that a new In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion board will be ap­point­ed with­in the next two weeks.He gave the as­sur­ance yes­ter­day while at­tend­ing the Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege Past Stu­dents' Re­union at the school's com­pound in San Fer­nan­do.There have re­peat­ed calls for the ap­point­ment of a new board with­in re­cent weeks, in the wake of the 31 e-mails re­vealed in Par­lia­ment by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Row­ley had ini­tial­ly for­ward­ed the e-mails, which he has claimed points to mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice by high-rank­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, to for­mer pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards last year.Richard in turn for­ward­ed it to the com­mis­sion, head­ed by Ken Gor­don, but the term of the board ex­pired be­fore it could com­plete its in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Gor­don has been ap­point­ed to his po­si­tion for three years.

CNC3 News

Row­ley and sev­er­al oth­er seg­ments of so­ci­ety have in­sist­ed that ei­ther an In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion or in­de­pen­dent probe is best suit­ed for the mat­ter.How­ev­er, in a re­lease last week, the com­mis­sion said while it has re­ceived le­gal coun­sel that it can probe the com­plaint by Row­ley, it is con­strained be­cause it did not have a new board in place.

Asked yes­ter­day how soon he would be con­firm­ing the new board, Car­mona said: "Why is it you are ask­ing such se­ri­ous ques­tions on a fam­i­ly day? The thing is it's a fam­i­ly day and let's keep it so­cial."Pressed fur­ther, Car­mona said, "What I can say very mat­ter-of-fact­ly is with­in the next two weeks there will cer­tain­ly be an In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion."He re­vealed that he had been hold­ing sev­er­al in­ter­views to ap­point a new com­mis­sion.

"I have been hav­ing mul­ti­fac­eted in­ter­views with var­i­ous per­son­nel. In fact, I have had in­ter­views with over 40 per­sons and cer­tain­ly your con­cerns will be ad­dressed in a very mat­ter-of-fact way in the next two weeks," he said.Asked if there was dif­fi­cul­ty in find­ing suit­able can­di­dates, Car­mona said: "There is al­ways a dif­fi­cul­ty. A lot of peo­ple talk and talk and talk, but they are not pre­pared to come for­ward."He said, how­ev­er, that he was not wor­ried about fill­ing the posts, not­ing, "We have great peo­ple in T&T!"

He al­so said he would con­tin­ue to en­gage young peo­ple in­to be­com­ing pa­tri­ots of T&T."I am deeply dis­ap­point­ed by the cyn­ics who want to know why I am en­gag­ing young peo­ple," he said."Those cyn­ics have for­got­ten the words of Dr Er­ic Williams, when he stat­ed that the fu­ture of T&T lies in the school bags of chil­dren."I want to tell those cyn­ics that the val­ue sys­tem that you have for the rest of your life is de­vel­oped be­tween the ages of eight and 16.

Those are the ages that I am con­cen­trat­ing on."Car­mona said cit­i­zens did not de­vel­op a "moral com­pass" when they are at­tend­ing uni­ver­si­ty."You de­vel­op it dur­ing that time when you are guid­ed by great par­ents and teach­ers," he said.He said he hoped that T&T would come on board and sup­port his ini­tia­tives.

He al­so salut­ed a po­lice of­fi­cer who pro­tect­ed his col­league WPC Williams of the Spe­cial Branch dur­ing a rob­bery on Thurs­day, as well as PC Si­mon Clapham, who was killed dur­ing a botched rob­bery at­tempt in Wood­brook last week.Car­mona said Williams was part of his se­cu­ri­ty de­tail and is re­spon­si­ble for tak­ing his chil­dren to school.

"I will be fail­ing in my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty if I didn't salute the po­lice of­fi­cer (PC Clapham) who died in a hail of gun­fire while stand­ing up to the ban­dits that at­tempt­ed to rob him of his car. It is sad to hear of it," he said."I have to al­so com­pli­ment WPC Williams. I want to com­mend her for the gal­lantry that was dis­played by her, a cool tem­pera­ment and the fact that the of­fi­cer came to her aid. It is re­al­ly sad."

Dur­ing the func­tion, Car­mona was giv­en a to­ken of ap­pre­ci­a­tion from pres­i­dent of the Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege Past Stu­dents' As­so­ci­a­tion Steven Sam­lals­ingh.