It's welcome news that Ken Gordon is being considered as a new chairman of the troubled Integrity Commission. Mr Gordon has given significant service to Trinidad and Tobago both in the private and public sector and maintained a profile of service with integrity for decades. At this juncture, the possibility that Ken Gordon's name had been forwarded for consideration to Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar by President George Maxwell Richards is welcome news not just because of the eminent eligibility of Gordon as a candidate but also because it signals a certain urgency on the part of the President of the Republic to returning the Integrity Commission to fully functional status.
This is no small matter, and President Richards is well aware of it. The President took significant stick for seeming to take his time to reconstitute the Commission after its most recent collapse. Since former Prime Minister Patrick Manning declined to confirm the second term of office of Justice Gerard des Iles, chairmen of the Integrity Commission have not served for long. Gordon Deane resigned after sustained questions were raised about possible conflicts that might have arisen as a result of his previous work in the private sector.
John Martin, along with the entire commission, stepped down in 2009 after the High Court ruled that they had acted in bad faith by failing to allow Dr Keith Rowley and his wife Sharon a chance to be heard during an investigation into the Landate Tobago development. Within months, a freshly appointed commission collapsed again after its chairman, Fr Henry Charles, stepped down in the face of accusations of plagiarism and issues related to church law. Within a week of Charles' resignation, every member of that commission had submitted their own letters of resignation to President Richards.
The resignation of Chairman Dr Eric St Cyr was almost a foregone conclusion after he told a reporter that Udecott Chairman Jearlean John was under investigation, continuing a pattern of careless speaking about the confidential business of the commission for which he had been quite vehemently chastised in the past. There are likely to be questions raised about Ken Gordon's engagements with the business community as there were about Gordon Deane's appointment and those matters should be expeditiously reviewed in the interests of settling the composition of the Integrity Commission in the shortest possible time.
The challenges that the Integrity Commission has faced in its short history point to some fundamental issues that this country has to embrace if it is to fulfill the spirit as well as the legal requirements of the Integrity in Public Life Act. Quite simply, the dispiriting experiences that the country has been witness to with successive commissioners has illustrated nothing less than the gap between the appearance and expectation of integrity and the reality of the demands of upholding it at the highest levels. The Integrity Commission cannot and indeed has not functioned because its Chairmen could not meet the rigorous demands of the office.
The failings of almost a decade of expectations of successive chairmen of the commission speak directly to the need to implement not just more focused review of those chosen to serve but also the need for an additional step of introspection and coaching that would allow potential appointees to be guided in reviewing their careers in light of the demanding role they will be expected to play. To serve on the Integrity Commission is to commit to a service that denies any master beyond that of structured, impeccable justice and confidential review.
Integrity Commissioners must expect to be judged not just on their present capacity but also on their life histories. Unlike a board posting, it allows no other employment and leaves its holders subject to an almost continuous review of their evaluations and judgements. These are real challenges, and the next candidate for the leadership role of the Integrity Commission would be well guided to learn from the hurdles that his predecessors faced.