Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley is demanding that Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar reinstate him into Parliament immediately.
He made the comment yesterday in the wake of the resignation of Integrity Commission deputy chairman Justice Sebastian Ventour.
Rowley said Ventour’s departure was a stunning development within the Integrity Commission.
“That is what we are seeing. It is a shocking collapse of the Integrity Commission,” he said in a telephone interview.
Rowley said given what the country had now seen and heard from Ventour, the PM had to use the same authority she used to expel him from Parliament to put him back in.
“She must rescind the expulsion,” Rowley said.
Ventour’s view that the Emailgate probe was far from over contradicted an earlier statement from the commission which said it had closed the investigation due to insufficient evidence to move forward.
Rowley said Ventour’s resignation and his statement had now left the commission facing “serious implications.”
“The Integrity Commission is required to have at least one retired judge and Justice Ventour was just one of two and if he says to the population that the commission’s statement was premature and irregular, that has serious implications against those who made those statements and provided those statements to be used in the way that it was used,” Rowley said.
“This is a shocking development,” he added.
The Integrity Commission has been thrown into disarray on several occasions in recent years.
It also collapsed back in 2009 when the courts found that then chairman John Martin had acted in bad faith with Rowley on the Landate affair. This led to a mass resignation of all commissioners.
Another slate, chaired by Father Henry Charles, also fell apart after just one week when then commissioner, now chairman Justice Zainool Hosein, resigned after a few hours and another commissioner, Jeffrey McFarlane, was also found to be ineligible for the appointment. Charles was also accused of plagiarism. Dr Eric Cyr then took over but was forced to resign after he told the media HDC head Jearlean John was under investigation before she was informed. Media mogul Ken Gordon replaced St Cyr but his commission also found itself in controversy after a fallout between Gordon and then commissioner Gladys Gafoor.