Fran­cis Joseph

Nine months af­ter the col­lapse of the last In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards is still search­ing for a full com­ple­ment of mem­bers.

He has found four, but the fifth–a char­tered ac­coun­tant–re­mains elu­sive. A me­dia re­lease from Pres­i­dent's House yes­ter­day stat­ed: "Over the past sev­er­al months, the pub­lic has been con­cerned, un­der­stand­ably, over the fact that the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has not been ap­point­ed. "As of now, of the five per­sons re­quired in or­der to con­sti­tute the com­mis­sion, four have been iden­ti­fied who are con­sid­ered to be suit­able, in keep­ing with the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act 2000, Part II, Sec­tion 4, sub-sec­tions (1) to (3). "The fifth per­son, a char­tered ac­coun­tant, is re­quired so that the ex­er­cise may be com­plet­ed. Over 15 per­sons, re­gard­ed as suit­ably qual­i­fied, have been in­vit­ed to serve and all of them have de­clined, cit­ing, es­pe­cial­ly, the de­mands that mem­ber­ship of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion will im­pose up­on them. "The pub­lic is giv­en the as­sur­ance that the dili­gent search con­tin­ues in the hope that a new In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion could be an­nounced in the near fu­ture." The T&T Guardian was in­formed that the pro­posed chair­man of the new com­mis­sion is a re­tired judge. Pres­i­dent Richards has been in con­sul­ta­tions with Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day to find suit­ably qual­i­fied per­sons to sit on the con­tro­ver­sial com­mis­sion.

The de­lay in ap­point­ing the com­mis­sion forced De­vant Ma­haraj, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Ra­dio Jaagri­ti, to file a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion on Oc­to­ber 5, 2009 against the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. That mat­ter is still pend­ing in the San Fer­nan­do High Court. In his mo­tion, Ma­haraj point­ed out that the mem­bers of the last In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion re­signed on Feb­ru­ary 3, 2009. A new com­mis­sion was not ap­point­ed un­til May 1, 2009 but all the mem­bers of the com­mis­sion re­signed for var­i­ous rea­sons. Hours af­ter the com­mis­sion was sworn in on May 1, 2009, Jus­tice Zain­ool Ho­sein, a mem­ber, re­signed. Ho­sein, a re­tired Court of Ap­peal judge, said he was of­fered the post of deputy chair­man by the Pres­i­dent, but when he turned up at Pres­i­dent's House, he was sworn in as an or­di­nary mem­ber, with the deputy chair­man post go­ing to Jef­frey Mc Far­lane. Mc Far­lane al­so re­signed af­ter it was dis­cov­ered he was a di­rec­tor on three state boards, the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB), the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nipdec) and the Home Mort­gage Bank.

Fa­ther Hen­ry Charles, who was the chair­man of the last com­mis­sion, al­so re­signed af­ter an is­sue arose con­cern­ing him and ar­ti­cles he wrote in the T&T Guardian as a colum­nist. The re­main­ing two mem­bers ten­dered their res­ig­na­tions be­cause they could not con­sti­tute a quo­rum to sit as the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.