Kevon Felmine

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley says he is ready to go to jail for not re­spond­ing to a re­quest by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to fur­nish them with ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to his 2004 De­c­la­ra­tion of In­come As­sets and Li­a­bil­i­ties.

Tar­get­ing In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man Zain­ool Ho­sein at the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's pub­lic meet­ing at Em­ba­cadere, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, Row­ley said he was cur­rent­ly busy with the peo­ple's busi­ness of putting the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship out of gov­ern­ment at the Sep­tem­ber 7 gen­er­al elec­tions.

"Well, let me tell Mr Zain­ool Ho­sein some­thing this evening, it was Sir Alexan­der Bus­ta­mante who said if a politi­cian hasn't been to jail he hasn't been all over the coun­try and if I have to go to jail as a re­sult of not re­spond­ing to you in 14 days, come I am ready to go."Be­cause be­tween now and Sep­tem­ber 7, I am busy with the peo­ple's busi­ness. I am busy putting this Gov­ern­ment out of of­fice and if that ques­tion could have wait­ed for 11 years, it could wait for 11 weeks," Row­ley said.

In a de­fi­ant mood, he said he be­lieves the let­ter was a re­ac­tion to his crit­i­cism of the con­tract award­ed to Gov­ern­ment fi­nancier Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices Ltd for $400 mil­lion Beetham Waste Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant and the com­mis­sion's fail­ure to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter.He said af­ter mak­ing those com­ments at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, on Au­gust 15, the com­mis­sion sent the let­ter re­quest­ing ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion on his de­c­la­ra­tion, threat­en­ing that if he did not com­ply with­in 14 days le­gal ac­tion would be tak­en against him.

"Hav­ing said that on Sat­ur­day, I got a let­ter dat­ed two days be­fore Sat­ur­day, which I re­ceived two days af­ter Sat­ur­day, open­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to some­thing that I filed 11 years ago," he said.

"They don't have enough in­for­ma­tion about the $400 mil­lion which they (Gov­ern­ment) thief in the Beetham Waste Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant, but they have enough time and in­for­ma­tion to go and ask me some stu­pid­ness about some­thing that I can't un­der­stand about some­thing from 11 years ago."

He added, "What is worst, sud­den­ly they get spunk, you know they can't tell you the sto­ry be­hind the two Range Rovers with the same chas­sis num­ber. They can't tell you about all the com­plaints they had about min­is­te­r­i­al mis­con­duct in this Gov­ern­ment, but they could tell me, they giv­ing me 14 days to re­spond and if I don't re­spond, they will pub­lish my name in the Gazette and then they will pro­ceed to take me to the High Court."

He said af­ter the res­ig­na­tion of for­mer com­mis­sion­er Se­bas­t­ian Ven­tour over the clo­sure of the Sec­tion 34 probe, Ho­sein should have left the com­mis­sion as well. He said Ho­sein was op­er­at­ing in con­flict.Say­ing that his life was an open book, Row­ley's mes­sage for Ho­sein was, "Mr Ho­sein, you can­not ques­tion my in­tegri­ty be­cause my life is an open book."