Richard Lord

?RICHARD LORD

There are no le­gal ob­sta­cles to Jack Warn­er's car­ry­ing out the func­tions of Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter while serv­ing as an ex­ec­u­tive at world gov­ern­ing body, Fi­fa.

This was re­vealed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the St Clair of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Ram­lo­gan read the find­ings of four in­de­pen­dent lawyers with whom he sought ad­vice on the is­sue.

The con­tro­ver­sy arose ear­li­er this month when new Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, said he in­tend­ed to write to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion seek­ing an opin­ion on whether it was eth­i­cal for a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter in T&T to per­form an­oth­er fee-pay­ing job at the same time.

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, with­in 48 hours of the com­plaint, ad­vised that Warn­er should di­vest him­self of one of the jobs.

But yes­ter­day, Ram­lo­gan said for­mer T&T At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Rus­sell Mar­tineau SC, for­mer Guyana AG Sir Fen­ton Ram­sa­hoye SC, British Queen's Coun­sel Michael Beloff and for­mer T&T pres­i­dent Sir El­lis Clarke said there were no le­gal ob­sta­cles to Warn­er car­ry­ing out the two jobs.

Ram­lo­gan said it was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Head of the Gov­ern­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, to de­ter­mine if Warn­er or any oth­er min­is­ter should re­main as a min­is­ter.

Ram­lo­gan de­nied he was abra­sive to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion when he called on it to act ex­pe­di­tious­ly with oth­er mat­ters be­fore it, some for as long as four or five years. He said there was no need to apol­o­gise for his re­marks then.

He was un­able to say how much the ad­vice sought had cost the state but he in­di­cat­ed that Sir El­lis' ser­vices were sought free of cost.

Opin­ions

?Sir El­lis:

"Brevi­ty (by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion) has been achieved at the ex­pense of ac­cu­ra­cy.

"It is dif­fi­cult to see how a con­flict of in­ter­est is like­ly to arise as a re­sult of a Cab­i­net min­is­ter be­ing a vice pres­i­dent of Fi­fa.

"The prac­ti­cal ques­tion is raised. Can a per­son give ad­e­quate at­ten­tion to the du­ties of a Cab­i­net Min­is­ter if one is al­so a vice pres­i­dent of Fi­fa?

"Ob­vi­ous­ly this is not for the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to de­ter­mine. Ba­si­cal­ly, it is for the Prime Min­is­ter to de­ter­mine whether or not the min­is­ter is giv­ing full and sat­is­fac­to­ry at­ten­tion to the dis­charge of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the min­istry,

"Here lies the an­swer to the orig­i­nal ques­tion which the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion faced."

Rus­sell Mar­tineau SC:

"The act does not pro­hib­it Mr Warn­er from hold­ing of­fice of min­is­ter while he is vice pres­i­dent of Fi­fa.

"The Code of Ethics for par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, in­clud­ing min­is­ters, does not pre­vent Mr Warn­er from hold­ing the of­fice of min­is­ter while he is vice pres­i­dent of Fi­fa but the lat­ter must not in­ter­fere with the prop­er dis­charge of his min­is­te­r­i­al and par­lia­men­tary du­ties.

"The Prime Min­is­ter may be called up­on to make a judg­ment in re­la­tion to Mr Warn­er's per­for­mance as a min­is­ter and the ef­fect of his po­si­tion as vice pres­i­dent of Fi­fa on that per­for­mance."

Sir Fen­ton Ram­sa­hoye SC:

"I am of the opin­ion that Mr Warn­er can hold of­fice as Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port and re­tain his elect­ed po­si­tion as vice pres­i­dent of Fi­fa."

Michael Beloff QC:

"I there­fore con­clude that there is noth­ing in the law of the re­pub­lic or the ethics code to re­quire Mr Warn­er to re­sign from his un­paid part-time role with Fi­fa, with whom he has been in­volved since 1983, con­se­quent up­on his ap­point­ment to the Cab­i­net.

"It is, I would add, ob­vi­ous that the oc­cu­pa­tion of Mr Warn­er of high of­fice in the in­ter­na­tion­al body is cal­cu­lat­ed to bring pres­tige to the re­pub­lic rather than to dam­age its in­ter­ests."