Richard Lord

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan yes­ter­day called on Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley to apol­o­gise pub­licly for seek­ing an­swers from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ex­plain the ap­point­ment of Dr Ann-Marie Bisses­sar to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. Row­ley made the call dur­ing an in­ter­view in San Fer­nan­do on Wednes­day. Dr Bisses­sar is the cousin of the Prime Min­is­ter's hus­band Dr Gre­go­ry Bisses­sar. Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair, Ram­lo­gan gave a chrono­log­i­cal or­der the ap­point­ment of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, say­ing that Per­sad-Bisses­sar was not con­sult­ed on the ap­point­ment of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

"She voiced pub­lic con­cern and protest at the fact that she was not con­sult­ed as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion about these ap­point­ments," Ram­lo­gan added. He said the com­mis­sion was ap­point­ed by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day. Ram­lo­gan said Row­ley was en­gag­ing in po­lit­i­cal mis­chief.

He said Row­ley's call lacks cred­i­bil­i­ty, adding that many of his state­ments were "base­less and with­out any mer­it." The AG de­clared: "That kind of be­hav­iours is un­be­com­ing of a Leader of the Op­po­si­tion...This kind of scan­dalous be­hav­ior can­not be tol­er­at­ed.

"It con­sti­tutes a di­rect and defam­a­to­ry at­tack on the Prime Min­is­ter," he added. Ram­lo­gan said by cast­ing as­per­sions on Bisses­sar, on an ap­point­ment made by the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment, "Dr Row­ley is tran­scend­ing the bounds of log­ic and ra­tio­nal­i­ty." He said the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty should take no­tice of Row­ley's pat­tern of be­hav­ior. "And I think Dr Row­ley will be well ad­vised to re­tract his state­ments and is­sue a pub­lic apol­o­gy to the Prime Min­is­ter for this base­less in­sin­u­a­tion that has ab­solute­ly no mer­it what­so­ev­er," Ram­lo­gan said. Mean­while, on the is­sue of any dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion to be tak­en against po­lice of­fi­cers who stayed away from work on Mon­day to protest the Gov­ern­ment pro­posed five per cent in­crease in salaries, Ram­lo­gan said that was a mat­ter for the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to de­ter­mine.