Fran­cis Joseph

Ten months af­ter the last In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion (IC) col­lapsed, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards is mov­ing to swear in five new mem­bers on Mon­day.

The swear­ing-in comes just be­fore Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh gives his judg­ment on a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion against the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al over the fail­ure of the Pres­i­dent to ap­point an In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. Pres­i­dent's House has not yet re­leased the date of the swear­ing-in, but the Chief State So­lic­i­tor's De­part­ment, in a let­ter dat­ed March 11 to the at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the claimant, De­vant Ma­haraj and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, re­vealed the date of the swear­ing-in at Pres­i­dent's House. In the let­ter, State at­tor­ney Re­han­na Ho­sein stat­ed: "We should be grate­ful if you could bring this let­ter to the im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion of the Ho­n­ourable Mr Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh. "We have been in­formed by Pres­i­dent's House that His Ex­cel­len­cy has iden­ti­fied a full slate of ap­pointees to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and has sched­uled a swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny for Mon­day 15 March 2010." The last In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion was sworn in on May 1, 2009, but it be­gan to col­lapse hours lat­er. Re­tired Jus­tice of Ap­peal, Zain­ool Ho­sein, re­turned his in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment the same day. He ex­plained that he was sworn in as an or­di­nary mem­ber, when the Pres­i­dent had promised him the post of deputy chair­man.

The chair­man, Fa­ther Hen­ry Charles, lat­er re­signed af­ter an is­sue of pla­gia­rism arose over a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle, while Jef­frey Mc Far­lane, Lyl­la Rose Ba­da and Gladys Gafoor all re­signed days lat­er. Since then, there has been no In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion with the Pres­i­dent say­ing he has had dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing suit­able can­di­dates. In Oc­to­ber, 2009, Ma­haraj filed the con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion, in which he is seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion that the non-ap­point­ment of the com­mis­sion is il­le­gal and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al as it vi­o­lates sec­tion 138 of the con­sti­tu­tion. Anand Ram­lo­gan is rep­re­sent­ing Ma­haraj while Ian Ben­jamin ap­pears for the AG. In his mo­tion, Ma­haraj point­ed out that the mem­bers of the last In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion re­signed on Feb­ru­ary 3. A new com­mis­sion was not ap­point­ed un­til May 1, but all the mem­bers of the com­mis­sion re­signed for var­i­ous rea­sons. Ma­haraj said since then, no com­mis­sion has been ap­point­ed. He said it was un­law­ful for the Gov­ern­ment to be car­ry­ing on with­out the com­mis­sion be­ing ap­point­ed and func­tion­ing. Ma­haraj said he had made sev­er­al com­plaints to the com­mis­sion which were pend­ing. He said these com­plaints could not be in­ves­ti­gat­ed with­out the com­mis­sion mem­bers.

Ma­haraj said the Ma­ha Sab­ha al­so had a com­plaint of dis­crim­i­na­tion be­fore the com­mis­sion, based on the re­fusal by the state to award a ra­dio broad­cast li­cence. He said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­plet­ed and all that was nec­es­sary was for the com­mis­sion to de­cide on whether the mat­ter should be re­ferred to the of­fice of the DPP for crim­i­nal charges to be laid. The ra­dio of­fi­cial said he wrote to the Pres­i­dent on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions on the is­sue of the non-ap­point­ment of the mem­bers. "The con­tin­u­ing non-ap­point­ment of a new IC cre­ates a win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty for cor­rup­tion, dis­hon­esty and abuse of pow­er," Ma­haraj added. He said there was no com­mis­sion to re­ceive the an­nu­al de­c­la­ra­tions of in­come, as­sets and li­a­bil­i­ties and state­ments of reg­is­tra­ble in­ter­ests from per­sons in pub­lic life. The loop­hole, he added, could eas­i­ly be ex­ploit­ed by cor­rupt per­sons in pub­lic life to the detri­ment of the peo­ple of T&T. Ma­haraj said no ac­tion could be tak­en on any com­plaints, and those in­di­vid­u­als were al­lowed to con­tin­ue to func­tion, even if they were guilty of mis­con­duct and wrong­do­ing. Boodoos­ingh heard the case and re­served judg­ment on Feb­ru­ary 4, promis­ing to de­liv­er his judg­ment some­time this month.