Richard Lord

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an says Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley should en­gage him­self in the con­ver­sa­tion on new pol­i­tics in T&T. Dook­er­an said so in an in­ter­view fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's Cer­e­mo­ni­al Open­ing of Par­lia­ment at the Red House. The ques­tion was posed in re­sponse to Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley's ex­pressed opin­ion to take the Jack Warn­er is­sue to Dook­er­an for his view on it.

In­de­pen­dent le­gal ad­vice was sought fol­low­ing ad­vice by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion which held that Warn­er should chose one of two jobs based on the Code of Ethics for Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans. Row­ley had writ­ten to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion seek­ing an opin­ion on the mat­ter.

Row­ley dis­missed the le­gal ad­vice re­ceived by Gov­ern­ment which said that there was no le­gal ob­sta­cle to Warn­er ac­cept­ing the two com­mit­ments at the same time. Row­ley said he would take his con­cerns to Dook­er­an who has been ad­vanc­ing a con­cept of new pol­i­tics. "Maybe Dr Row­ley might need to talk about new pol­i­tics. We look for­ward to that be­cause he him­self is fac­ing a chal­lenge."