New In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man Hay­den Git­tens is ful­ly fo­cused on the task at hand at the com­mis­sion and won’t be side­tracked.

Git­tens made that clear yes­ter­day in a brief com­ment, fol­low­ing an at­tack against him by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Sen­a­tor Wade Mark.

Mark raised cer­tain claims and ques­tions about Git­tens and called for him to re­sign dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the par­ty’s Ch­agua­nas head of­fice.

Git­tens, how­ev­er, replied, “I have no in­ten­tion of re­sign­ing from the com­mis­sion. I thought long and hard be­fore I ac­cept­ed the ap­point­ment from Her Ex­cel­len­cy. I am com­mit­ted to de­vot­ing my en­er­gies and my ef­forts to mak­ing the com­mis­sion a more im­pact­ful or­gan­i­sa­tion and en­sur­ing that it suc­ceeds in its man­date and that’s my fo­cus and I won’t be di­vert­ed from that.”

He added, “In terms of whether I con­tin­ue in the po­si­tion or not, that’s up to the pre­rog­a­tive of the Pres­i­dent, of course.”

At the me­dia con­fer­ence, Mark ex­pand­ed on claims that the last com­mis­sion chair­man Ra­jen­dra Ram­lo­gan—whose tenure end­ed Jan­u­ary 12—was not reap­point­ed due to al­leged is­sues con­cern­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Mark asked if Git­tens would probe the PM in fu­ture or dis­con­tin­ue any probe.

De­tail­ing an ad­dress in West Trinidad, Mark claimed Git­tens was a neigh­bour of House Speak­er Brigid An­nisette-George and her hus­band New­man George, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny’s chair­man. Mark ques­tioned why Git­tens “hadn’t told T&T” that he was their neigh­bour.

Asked if this was a strong enough ba­sis for his res­ig­na­tion, Mark cit­ed “per­cep­tion,” not­ing T&T has a small so­ci­ety “we have to be ex­treme­ly care­ful”, there can be “no whiff” of bias, crony­ism, cor­rup­tion or favouritism and a that com­mis­sion chair­man had to be above re­proach.

Al­leg­ing Git­tens was “taint­ed and com­pro­mised”, Mark called on Git­tens to con­firm or de­ny if he was a “card-car­ry­ing” Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) mem­ber or “clos­et” PNM.

Ex­press­ing con­cern that the com­mis­sion had in­for­ma­tion on many peo­ple, Mark queried if Op­po­si­tion mem­bers’ in­for­ma­tion might find their way to PNM’s Bal­isi­er House.

Mark al­so claimed Git­tens’ ap­point­ment as Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (SEC) in 2017 re­quired the “bless­ing” of the Fi­nance Min­is­ter and Cab­i­net.

Mark ques­tioned the Pres­i­dent’s due dili­gence on Git­tens’ ap­point­ment to the com­mis­sion and im­par­tial­i­ty.

Claim­ing there would be no con­fi­dence in Git­tens’ stew­ard­ship, Mark called on him to re­sign, fail­ing which the Pres­i­dent should re­voke his ap­point­ment. If not, Mark said, the UNC would have to con­sid­er oth­er op­tions to ad­dress this mat­ter. He gave no de­tails.

There was no re­sponse from the Pres­i­dent’s Of­fice to Guardian Me­dia queries on Mark’s claims.

How­ev­er, Sources close to Git­tens al­so said there was noth­ing wor­thy in at­tack­ing him on the ba­sis of his res­i­dence, since he had lived there for 20 years.

It was not­ed that Git­tens’ SEC ap­point­ment oc­curred af­ter a re­turn from over­seas and he was in­ter­viewed by the board. They said notwith­stand­ing the fact that Fi­nance Min­is­ter had ve­to pow­er, Git­tens had no in­flu­ence on that and he com­plet­ed the three-year SEC tenure.