When reporters were pushing last week to find out all that she knew about the Mary King matter, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar got a bit irritated and resorted on a couple occasions to advising the reporters to ask the Attorney General the questions they were asking of her.Last week many more allegations surfaced in the newspapers about suggested inappropriate behaviour of King when she held ministerial portfolio. The leaks were clearly directed to further entangle the former minister, while Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar and a couple of her ministers adopted the line that she (the PM) had little option but to fire Mary King.
Looking on from the sidelines one could easily arrive at the conclusion that the Prime Minister's minders are trying very hard to clear her of any responsibility and to have her look as if she acted expeditiously and definitively, while the alleged act of Mary King was not only intolerable but had a pattern to it.From all that has been made public so far, there is much that Mary King has to answer for and the action of the Prime Minister to dismiss her minister seems in the circumstances to have been the right thing to do.It was a political decision, the Prime Minister using the power granted by the Constitution to hire and fire her ministers at her discretion. And with the entire Government under scrutiny, the Prime Minister had to account to the national community in a political manner. That she chose firing is her option.
It is an option similar in nature chosen by then Prime Minister Patrick Manning when he fired Keith Rowley. Manning had insisted to journalists that he had no explanation to give, there was no requirement for a fair hearing, none that forced him to substantiate the claim of Rowley's alleged "wajang" behaviour. He had taken action to remove the man from his Cabinet and that was that.Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar has not been as explicit as that but trended in the same direction and that is fine: she has political responsibility; she has taken action and will either benefit from a great and decisive act or pay the consequences if the decision is proven to have been wrong.
What the Government has sensibly and legitimately done to satisfy further responsibility for clarity on the matter is to have passed the file on for a full investigation by the Integrity Commission.Under its jurisdiction, the commission has the "power to authorise investigations, summon witnesses, require the production of any reports, documents, other relevant information, and to do all such things as it considers necessary or expedient for the purpose of carrying out its func- tions."Those are serious powers held by the commission and it is left to be seen whether it will exercise them in regard to this investigation. The hope is that the commission cannot be starved of funds to carry out its investigation.
All of that having been said and the investigations underway, there are very serious political issues that have been raised by the Prime Minister herself and others on her actions and responsibilities in the Mary King affair.First of all, the Prime Minister telling reporters to go ask her Attorney General about the investigations which were supposed to have taken place first in December 2010 seemed a little strange. After all, she is the Prime Minister, the one with ultimate responsibility to the electorate in such matters. Was she in annoyance at Ramlogan for not picking up the "inappropriate" behaviour of Mary King in office, having searched the file on two separate occasions?
Or was she seeking to shift responsibility from herself for not being more involved in the matter; and the latter more so because she is said to have had more than an inkling of an allegation that the minister was sub-serving herself and family with awards by her ministry? Indeed, Camini Maharaj has quoted a source saying that the Prime Minister allegedly made a challenge to her minister on the award of the Web site contract.The Attorney General too would find it hard to extricate himself from some major responsibility for not coming to the conclusion he did when he issued the statement one week ago.
But the handling of the process raises larger questions about governance, prime ministerial responsibility, ministerial responsi- bility and procurement procedures.The Manning administration ignored the procurement draft agreed upon by the contractors. It was obviously not the intention of the then Government to put legislation in place that would hamper its plans for the special purpose state enterprises to expedite a programme of public sector construction.Whether deliberately or not, it led to a catastrophic wastage of public funds, facilitated major corruption activities, still to be properly investigated and prosecuted. Undoubtedly, proceeding in such a manner whetted the appetite for public funds to be misappropriated at best and whole- scale corruption at worst.
The People's Partnership Government got into power through a campaign of stirring condemnation of that kind of confiscation of public funds for friends, family and political cohorts. From within the Partnership has come the voice of Makandal Daaga saying that in 50 years he has not heard so many stories of alleged corrupt behaviour by public officials.Whatever the Integrity Commission and possibly the Director of Public Prosecution and the police come forward with, it is the Prime Minister who has to ask questions of her Attorney General and to give a full explanation, not truncated half sentences.
Rather, she needs to make public all the information she received from her minister, the outcome of the investigations of the Attorney General, if indeed he supplied her with a report on his examination of the documents sent to him, and to explain lucidly and expansively the reason for what, in the face of no other explanation, why the six-month delay. And if in fact it was -and only because of-the newspaper reporting which forced the Government to take action.Mary King has said she is anxious to clear her name. We can expect therefore that whether through the Integrity Commission or otherwise we will hear her full story.