Panday: We will file Integrity forms

Leader of the Opposition, Basdeo Panday, assured that UNC politicians will declare their personal assets on the prescribed forms to effect the Integrity in Public Life Act 2000. He was speaking to reporters yesterday at his office at Charles Street in Port-of-Spain, after a three hour meeting between UNC politicians and an Integrity Commission team led by deputy chairman John Martin. Panday saw no problem in complying. He said the Opposition had invited the Integrity Commission to meet them to answer queries on the Act about what to declare. “It’s a very long form — 19 pages,” he said.

Panday said the commission had cleared up many bothersome questions. Asked if the Opposition would seek a further extension to the August 15 deadline to file the forms, Panday did not talk of any further blanket extension, but said: “It will be a case for individual members.” He did not foresee any problems with Opposition members filing their forms, assuring: “We intend to comply.” Both Panday and Martin stayed mum on Panday’s charge that the Integrity Commission was in the pocket of the ruling PNM. Martin simply said that he was “happy to be here.” Martin too did not foresee any problems wth declarants filing their forms.

Concerning Fyzabad MP Chandresh Sharma’s lawsuit to prod the commission to act, Martin said: “I haven’t looked at it yet. We have not yet been served it.” Martin said the commission had exempted declarations for 2002 because the forms were printed in December 2003, a month beyond the maximum possible extended deadline of November. He said  the commission had received some completed forms. Despite protests that judges/magistrates and directors of State bodies be exempt from the Act, Martin said they had been sent forms. Some 2,000 people, he said, are due to file.