Rhon­dor Dowlat

For­mer prime min­is­ter of T&T Patrick Man­ning be­lieves that politi­cians who are guilty of hir­ing rel­a­tives at their re­spec­tive con­stituen­cy of­fices are not wor­thy of pub­lic of­fice.

Man­ning made a state­ment via his Face­book page on Wednes­day night.

He dis­closed that in all his 44 years as a Par­lia­men­tar­i­an, he has nev­er em­ployed a fam­i­ly mem­ber or rel­a­tive in his con­stituen­cy of­fice.

"Nor have I ever had my moth­er, fa­ther or spouse (com­mon-law or legal­ly mar­ried) work­ing in my par­lia­men­tary of­fice, whether they were paid or un­paid," Man­ning stat­ed in the post.

But he failed to men­tion that he had em­ployed his wife, Hazel Man­ning, as the min­is­ter of ed­u­ca­tion (2001 -2007) and lat­er as min­is­ter of lo­cal gov­ern­ment (2007-2010) dur­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Un­der Man­ning's lead­er­ship, the PNM suf­fered a de­feat in 2010, and Kei­th Row­ley suc­ceed­ed him as leader of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment.

In 2012, he suf­fered a de­bil­i­ta­tion stroke and has since made sig­nif­i­cant re­cov­ery af­ter bow­ing out of the po­lit­i­cal lime­light.

In his so­cial me­dia post Man­ning said that he al­ways sought to en­gage the peo­ple of the PNM con­stituen­cy struc­ture who worked tire­less­ly to en­sure that he was elect­ed to of­fice. Peo­ple, he stat­ed, who had a good work­ing knowl­edge of the needs of the "grass­roots" to work with him in his par­lia­men­tary of­fice.

"Those who are guilty of these trans­gres­sions are un­wor­thy of pub­lic of­fice. And as the youth would say it, "nuff said!," Man­ning's post read.

On March 20, amid moves by Fix­in' T&T to get the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to ex­am­ine sev­er­al Op­po­si­tion MPs' hir­ing of rel­a­tives at con­stituen­cy of­fices, Op­po­si­tion MP Su­ruj Ram­bachan called on the Clerk of the House to clar­i­fy Par­lia­ment's guide­lines on the hir­ing is­sue.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and UNC MPs–Bar­ry Padarath, Dr Bhoe Tewarie and Rush­ton Paray in­di­cat­ed ear­li­er this month, rel­a­tives were work­ing, and had worked at their con­stituen­cy of­fices.

On March 17, PNM hous­ing min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald was dis­missed by Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley af­ter a third set of al­le­ga­tions against her sur­faced, this one in­volv­ing al­leged breach of Par­lia­ment rules con­cern­ing al­leged hir­ing of her spouse, Micheal Carew and his broth­er, Lennox Carew, at her Port-of-Spain con­stituen­cy of­fice dur­ing 2010-2015.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, on March 12, said two rel­a­tives had been em­ployed at her con­stituen­cy of­fice for sev­er­al years and af­ter this term's new guide­lines, was seek­ing ad­vice from the Par­lia­ment on the sit­u­a­tion. Per­sad-Bisses­sar's rel­a­tives have been em­ployed for 20 years and 14 years.

Padarath dis­closed that he ter­mi­nat­ed the con­stituen­cy of­fice em­ploy­ment of a rel­a­tive in Feb­ru­ary af­ter re­ceiv­ing the Par­lia­ment's con­stituen­cy man­u­al for the 2015-2020 term then. This out­laws hir­ing of var­i­ous types of rel­a­tives.

Padarath made it clear that it wasn't an "im­me­di­ate" rel­a­tive, who had worked in his con­stituen­cy of­fice. He said he had con­tact­ed the Par­lia­ment and sub­se­quent­ly re­paid salaries paid to the per­son.

Paray said he had in­formed the Par­lia­ment, when he be­came MP and found a dis­tant rel­a­tive (daugh­ter of his grand­fa­ther's sec­ond wife) em­ployed from the tenure of pre­vi­ous MP Win­ston Pe­ters. He said he was told by Par­lia­ment that due to the dis­tance of the re­la­tion­ship, it was al­right. The per­son is a part-time em­ploy­ee.

Fix­in' T&T, how­ev­er, ar­gued that the UNC MPs breached the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act as it re­lates to, among oth­ers, Sec­tions 24 (2), and 29 (1).

Fix­in' T&T was sup­port­ed by the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty–which said Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Padarath's ex­pla­na­tions were "weak" and de­mand­ed they re­sign–and the rul­ing PNM which re­peat­ed PNM chair­man Franklin Khan's call for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­sign. How­ev­er, Ram­bachan, who called on the Clerk of the House to shed light on the mat­ter, said facts on the hir­ing is­sue were be­ing dis­tort­ed.

Not­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween guide­lines for the past 2010-2015 par­lia­men­tary term and the cur­rent 2015-2020 term, ques­tions were raised as to who changed the guide­lines and if the changed guide­lines were for­mal­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed to MPs or was the man­u­al sim­ply dis­trib­uted to Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans with­out spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions on the changes.

Ques­tions were al­so raised as to whether or not the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was of the Clerk of the House and if the guide­lines were sup­posed to be agreed up­on by the House Com­mit­tee.

Oth­er ques­tions chal­lenged if the guide­lines were changed by the Clerk of the House or the new Speak­er, or were they changed by the Clerk of the House with­out ref­er­ence ei­ther to the for­mer or new Speak­er in the in­ter­reg­num be­tween the time the tenth Par­lia­ment was pro­rogued and the Eleventh Par­lia­ment be­gan?