Once again the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has found it­self in trou­ble by virtue of its own in­com­pe­tence to han­dle in­ves­ti­ga­tions in a fair and prop­er man­ner. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan had to read in an­oth­er news­pa­per that he was the sub­ject of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and that the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion had not even told him so.

This in­ci­dent re­calls a sim­i­lar mat­ter in which the en­tire In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, un­der then Chair­man John Mar­tin, re­signed in Feb­ru­ary 2009 af­ter an ad­verse judg­ment against it by Jus­tice Mau­reen Ra­j­nauth-Lee on Feb­ru­ary 3, 2009 in a mat­ter brought against the Com­mis­sion by Dr Kei­th Row­ley. On Feb­ru­ary 7, 2009, the Guardian re­port­ed, in part, as fol­lows:

"The judge ruled that the com­mis­sion act­ed in bad faith in re­la­tion to Row­ley, and was guilty of the tort of mis­fea­sance in pub­lic of­fice. She al­so found on the facts that there was an un­fair abuse of pow­er on the part of the com­mis­sion in lead­ing Row­ley and his wife, Sharon, to be­lieve that the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in re­la­tion to Lan­date were on­go­ing and that Mrs Row­ley had a con­tin­u­ing oblig­a­tion to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion to the com­mis­sion.

"Af­ter the court judg­ment, Row­ley called on mem­bers of the com­mis­sion to demit of­fice. On Wednes­day, mem­bers of the com­mis­sion met in an emer­gency meet­ing and de­cid­ed to ten­der their res­ig­na­tions to the Pres­i­dent, just six months short of the com­ple­tion of their term. This is the first time that an en­tire in­de­pen­dent com­mis­sion has re­signed in the af­ter­math of con­tro­ver­sy."

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers