Re­open Lan­date is the call from At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan yes­ter­day. Speak­ing dur­ing the week­ly post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, Ram­lo­gan said the en­tire mat­ter in­volv­ing the probe must be clar­i­fied in the pub­lic in­ter­est. Lan­date was a pri­vate hous­ing de­vel­op­ment project at Ma­son Hall, To­ba­go. It is owned by Sharon Row­ley, wife of Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley. It was al­leged dur­ing the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the health sec­tor that ma­te­ri­als for use in the con­struc­tion of the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal was si­phoned to the Lan­date project.

The re­port of the en­quiry rec­om­mend­ed the Lar­ce­ny Act be re­vis­it­ed with re­spect to the project. Row­ley won a le­gal bat­tle with the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion last year when a High Court judge ruled it act­ed un­fair­ly against him in the mat­ter. The judge in­di­cat­ed then that Row­ley's right to be heard in the mat­ter was de­nied by the com­mis­sion. Ram­lo­gan yes­ter­day called on the com­mis­sion "to clar­i­fy for the pub­lic the sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion it had con­duct­ed in­to the Lan­date mat­ter, in­volv­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley." He said the High Court rul­ing "did not ad­dress the sub­stan­tive mer­its of the com­plaint that was be­fore the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion." He said there were two al­le­ga­tions; the si­phon­ing of ma­te­ri­als from the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal project, which is still in­com­plete, and the ex­pe­di­tious grant of plan­ning per­mis­sion for the project to be re­zoned from agri­cul­tur­al us­age to res­i­den­tial us­age.

Ram­lo­gan said if the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion had felt the need to meet with the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter "then the sub­stan­tive mer­it and vin­di­ca­tion ei­ther to prove and vin­di­cate Dr Row­ley's in­no­cence or to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter thor­ough­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly and bring it to a gen­uine end to say that no wrong­do­ing was found, should in fact take place." He then called on the com­mis­sion "to in­di­cate the sta­tus of that mat­ter." He said: "If Dr Row­ley was vin­di­cat­ed I ask that the re­port be made pub­lic, so that prop­er vin­di­ca­tion and true pub­lic jus­tice can take place.

"And if it is that the mat­ter was sud­den­ly closed or shelved un­der a mis­ap­pre­hen­sion or a mis­un­der­stand­ing as to what the court ruled, then they must re­open that mat­ter and bring it to its clo­sure in ac­cor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice so that the rule of law will pre­vail." He said there should not be one rule for Dr Row­ley and an­oth­er for Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er. Deal­ing with the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, the AG said al­le­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing should not be left over the heads of pub­lic of­fi­cials. He said: "It can­not be right and it un­der­mines pub­lic con­fi­dence in the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and the ar­chi­tec­ture of our con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments for these mat­ters to drag on for such a long time – that a Gov­ern­ment has come and gone – and we are still none the wis­er as a pop­u­la­tion."

He said it was a mat­ter of "great anx­i­ety and con­cern" that in the an­nu­al re­ports of the com­mis­sion to Par­lia­ment a list of the com­plaints were not in­clud­ed or the sta­tus of their in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mat­ters. "The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion is far too im­por­tant an in­sti­tu­tion to op­er­ate in such an ob­scure and mys­te­ri­ous man­ner," he said. He said he was hap­py to see the present chair­man of the com­mis­sion , for­mer In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Er­ic St Cyr in­ter­act with the me­dia. "We need to change the face­less, name­less and al­most anony­mous ap­proach by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion," the AG said.