A red tide swept through the Queen’s Park Savannah yesterday as thousands of People National Movement (PNM) supporters gathered for the party’s annual family day. Dubbed a day of fun, it quickly took on the look and feel of a political rally by the time Opposition leader Dr Keith Rowley took the stage just after 4 pm.
Rowley kept his finger on hot political topics including government misspending, Section 34 and the recent collapse of the Integrity Commission. He said the Prime Minister’s attorney, Israel Khan, wrote to the Integrity Commission calling for the termination of the investigation on a letterhead that bore the name of chairman of the Integrity Commission, Zainool Hosein.
“So the law firm looking to request the termination of the investigation a person listed on the letterhead of that law firm, is the person to terminate the investigation,” he said. Rowley said if the investigations showed that the e-mails are fake, so be it but he criticised Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar for retaining a criminal lawyer, to pressure the Integrity Commission for a statement.
“The Prime Minister decided it was time to exonerate herself,” he said. Responding to Persad-Bissessar’s claim that she did not interfere or influence the Integrity Commissions decision, the PNM leader declared: “Madam Prime Minister, you are not speaking the truth.” Rowley further claimed that Khan had interceded on her behalf.
When the T&T Guardian contacted Hosein yesterday after Rowley’s revelation but he declined to comment and said he had not heard the speech. “But the matter of the Integrity Commission is before the President,” he said.
Staying on the Integrity Commission issue, Rowley said that the issue must now be filling the vacancies on the Commission, which cannot be done without the consent of the Opposition leader. Since he has been suspended from Parliament by Persad-Bissessar, he was curious to find out how President Anthony Carmona will fill the spaces.
“I want to tell President Carmona, that in case he is not aware, the Prime Minister throw me out of Parliament but any approval must come through me,” he said. Rowley said despite that he is “putting the President on notice” that he is still willing to meet and treat with the appointment of the new Integrity Commission bunder a new chairman.
Rowley also called on Persad-Bissessar to call the election now rather than later. He acknowledged that the elections were constitutionally due before September 17, but said with the budget cycle starts on October 1, making for a tight start to the new term for the next government. He said that Persad-Bissessar will go down in history as the only leader to lose five elections after riding into power on a wave of approval. He was referring to the four elections in 2013 and the upcoming 2015 general elections.
He said the Government, during its five year term, spent more than $400 billion in successive budgets without anything major to show for it.