Panday, Williams, Fuad slam AG

OPPOSITION LEADER Basdeo Panday, former Senate President Michael Williams and Barataria/San Juan MP Dr Fuad Khan all took Attorney-General Glenda Morean to task yesterday over the non-appointment of a new Integrity Commission (IC) and proposals being considered by Cabinet for its future. Morean indicated that at its weekly meeting on Thursday, Cabinet will consider either replacing the IC with an Anti-Corruption Commission or strengthening the powers of the existing IC. She said either case involved taking legislation to Parliament which required Opposition support for passage and was optimistic that the UNC would support the legislation. However when contacted yesterday, Panday said it was “very difficult” to say whether the UNC would support this legislation since the Government had not consulted the Opposition on the matter to date nor was any member of the UNC privy to the contents of the proposed legislation. He said the UNC would have to wait until the legislation is tabled in Parliament next month and analyse it thoroughly before making its position clear.

While reiterating that the IC in its current form was not effective to deal with corruption, Williams stressed: “Until new legislation is in place, the existing IC act remains the law of Trinidad and Tobago which the President, Prime Minister and the AG have all sworn to uphold.”  He claimed “all Morean’s talk about anti-corruption legislation from Hong Kong is just so much eyewash to protect Manning’s PNM clique from making IC declarations which ironically imposed on all who went before.” For his part, Khan slammed Manning and Government Ministers Colm Imbert, Dr Keith Rowley and Ken Valley for supporting the Integrity in Public Life Act 2000 just to “make political mileage against the UNC.” The UNC MP claimed that now that the PNM was in power, integrity no longer mattered and corruption was the order of the day in the Manning Administration.