Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley is claim­ing that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar breached the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act when she ac­cept­ed a gift to stay at the home of her friend, busi­ness­man Ralph Gopaul. Row­ley made the claim dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at his Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice yes­ter­day, while say­ing he was mov­ing to write to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion ask­ing that it in­ves­ti­gate the Prime Min­is­ter in re­la­tion to that mat­ter. Row­ley's an­nounce­ment came a day af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar pub­licly ad­mit­ted that the Gopauls were her friends and that she stayed at their home with­out cost for three months af­ter the May 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so said that based on news­pa­per re­ports, Gopaul was the suc­cess­ful bid­der for a $40 mil­lion trans­port con­tract with the state-owned Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Co Ltd. It was the T&T Guardian which re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly on May 13 that the $40 mil­lion NP truck­ing con­tract was about to be award­ed to Gopaul. CDS Trans­port sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, claim­ing it had been cheat­ed in its bid for the con­tract in favour of Gopaul. At yes­ter­day's news con­fer­ence, Row­ley said: "Mr Gopaul, hav­ing pro­vid­ed free bed and break­fast to the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T, now finds him­self (to be) the favoured con­trac­tor at NP."

Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment's re­sponse to "this scan­dal" was that no con­tract had been award­ed.

Row­ley quot­ed Sec­tion 27 (1) of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act to sup­port his claim that the Prime Min­is­ter was in breach of the law. "We now have it on good or­der and good au­thor­i­ty that the Prime Min­is­ter ac­cept­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly three months of free bed and break­fast from the Gopauls in Pasea (Tu­na­puna)," he said. "The very first act of the Prime Min­is­ter might very well have been to breach the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act." He said that was done "by ac­cept­ing free ac­com­mo­da­tion and pos­si­ble food and so­lace from a fam­i­ly who has been known to be do­ing busi­ness with the state."

He said the NP trans­port con­tract was "a rag­ing scan­dal" and the com­pa­ny would have to ex­plain to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. "This mat­ter has on­ly just be­gun," Row­ley said. He added that the probe was in­tend­ed to de­ter­mine if there was any con­nec­tion "be­tween that free stay and what is hap­pen­ing at NP to­day, and whether the use (ac­cep­tance) of this gift by the Prime Min­is­ter was not it­self im­prop­er and in vi­o­la­tion of Sec­tion 27 (1)." Row­ley said the com­mis­sion was the most pow­er­ful in­ves­tiga­tive tool in T&T. He said it had un­lim­it­ed pow­ers once it pur­sued a mat­ter. He said re­fusal to co-op­er­ate with the com­mis­sion was an of­fence.

Row­ley was crit­i­cal of the re­spons­es from the Gov­ern­ment to le­git­i­mate ques­tions on the mat­ter in Par­lia­ment. He said the Gov­ern­ment said the ques­tions about the oc­cu­pa­tion of the house in Tu­na­puna was not rel­e­vant. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she stayed at the Tu­na­puna home of the Gopauls be­fore and af­ter the May 24, 2010, gen­er­al elec­tion. She said it was be­cause of her pub­lic en­gage­ments and al­so be­cause of threats to her per­son­al safe­ty that she ac­cept­ed the of­fer to re­side there un­til the for­mer prime min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning, va­cat­ed the of­fi­cial res­i­dence at St Ann's . Row­ley said Man­ning re­mained at the of­fi­cial res­i­dence for two weeks af­ter the polls.