Richard Lord

The con­tro­ver­sy over Jack Warn­er serv­ing as Cab­i­net Min­is­ter while em­ployed as vice pres­i­dent of world foot­ball gov­ern­ing body, Fi­fa, is not a sim­ple mat­ter, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan says. Ram­lo­gan told yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, that fol­low­ing Wednes­day's ad­vice from the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion on the is­sue he de­cid­ed to get in­de­pen­dent opin­ions from three promi­nent at­tor­neys be­fore ad­vis­ing the Cab­i­net on the mat­ter. Last week Fri­day, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley raised ques­tions over the de­ci­sion by Warn­er to be a full-time Cab­i­net min­is­ter while at the same time be­ing paid by Fi­fa as an ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer. He said then that Warn­er should choose one of the jobs.

Row­ley on Mon­day wrote to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion ask­ing for its ad­vice on the is­sue. Its re­sponse, which was giv­en with­in 48 hours, re­quired that per­sons who of­fer them­selves for Cab­i­net posts should or­gan­ise them­selves so as to en­sure there was no breach of the Code of Con­duct or Code of Ethics. Ram­lo­gan said in re­sponse to the com­mis­sion's "ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion" he had asked Warn­er to present him with the terms and con­di­tions which gov­ern his po­si­tion as Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent.

He said he as­sumed that the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion did not re­ceive le­gal ad­vice be­fore mak­ing its opin­ion pub­lic. He said as a con­se­quence he was so­lic­it­ing "in­de­pen­dent ad­vice" from three lead­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al ex­perts. They are for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Rus­sell Mar­tineau SC, Sir Fen­ton Ram­sa­hoye SC (for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Guyana) and John Almei­da, of Charles Rus­sell Part­ners, the stand­ing Privy Coun­cil agents for the state of T&T, to so­lic­it an opin­ion from Michael Beloff, QC.

The AG added: "It is not as clear cut as it ap­pears at first blush and fur­ther­more the Code of Ethics, re­ferred to by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, is a mat­ter that would need care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion in light of the mod­ern re­al­i­ties that we face in 2010." He said he would like the opin­ions with­in sev­en days so that he could re­port to the na­tion next Thurs­day.

"So there is no cause for con­cern, I in­tend to do that which is right." the AG added. In com­mend­ing the com­mis­sion for the man­ner in which it han­dled the com­plaint he list­ed sev­er­al oth­ers which have been out­stand­ing for too long to be dealt with in a sim­i­lar­ly ex­pe­di­tious man­ner.

They in­clud­ed:

�2 Com­plaint against the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for grant­i­ng per­mis­sion for an il­le­gal po­lit­i­cal ral­ly at Wood­ford Square dur­ing a sit­ting of Par­lia­ment on Oc­to­ber 3, 2008;

�2 al­le­ga­tion of in­sid­er-trad­ing against for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira with re­spect to the Cli­co/CL Fi­nan­cial bailout in Feb­ru­ary 2009;

�2 al­le­ga­tion that Ja­maat al Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr had struck a deal with for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to grant cer­tain ben­e­fits to the or­gan­i­sa­tion in ex­change for its sup­port in the 2002 gen­er­al elec­tion;

�2 for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al John Je­re­mie mak­ing cer­tain al­le­ga­tions about Diego Mar­tin West MP Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­cern­ing an In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion re­port on June 5, 2009;

�2 al­le­ga­tions against for­mer Cul­ture Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc Don­ald over the "scan­dalous pub­lic ex­pose" of the award of $4 mil­lion to $6 mil­lion in schol­ar­ships with­out any clear cri­te­ria and any clear re­ward for the coun­try in terms of con­trac­tu­al ser­vice to the na­tion at the end of the course on De­cem­ber 1, 2009;

�2 al­le­ga­tions against the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly al­leg­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion against the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty on the is­land re­gard­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of state lands and the con­struc­tion of a tem­ple on De­cem­ber 5, 2009;

�2 al­le­ga­tions against the con­struc­tion of a church in the Heights of Gua­napo on Feb­ru­ary 26, 2010; and,

�2 al­le­ga­tions against for­mer Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh over his ac­qui­si­tion of cer­tain prop­er­ties on May 18, 2010.

Ram­lo­gan said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment stood for the rule of law and was ready to de­fend the prin­ci­ples of in­tegri­ty and trans­paren­cy in pub­lic life by all who served in the ad­min­is­tra­tion.