Gail Alexan­der

Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards has turned down UNC chair­man Jack Warn­er's re­cent re­quest to re­move In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man Dr Er­ic St Cyr. "....I am con­fi­dent that with re­spect to all mat­ters be­fore it, the com­mis­sion will pro­ceed to dis­charge its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties ac­cord­ing to law, and in ac­cor­dance with the tenets of fair­ness and fun­da­men­tal jus­tice," Richards in­di­cat­ed in his re­sponse yes­ter­day to Warn­er. Warn­er had writ­ten Richards last week re­quest­ing the re­moval of St Cyr from the post of com­mis­sion chair­man. That fol­lowed St Cyr's ex­pres­sion of his per­son­al opin­ion on the Prime Min­is­ter's stay, fol­low­ing the May 24, 2010 elec­tion, at a Tu­na­puna house.

Warn­er, as well as oth­er Gov­ern­ment mem­bers, had said St Cyr's re­marks had "dis­played an open bias," ap­peared to have an "al­liance with the Op­po­si­tion leader," and had brought the com­mis­sion in dis­re­pute. Warn­er al­so had con­tend­ed that St Cyr's opin­ion might have been seen as the opin­ion of all oth­er com­mis­sion mem­bers. Warn­er al­so had writ­ten St Cyr call­ing on him to re­sign. But yes­ter­day in a let­ter to Warn­er, Richards stat­ed: "I am cer­tain you will read­i­ly ap­pre­ci­ate that such ini­tia­tive as I am per­mit­ted to ex­er­cise in re­la­tion to the com­mis­sion must be care­ful and can on­ly be ex­er­cised for good rea­son as pre­scribed by the Con­sti­tu­tion and bear­ing in mind Sec­tions 5 (2) (a) and 8(2) of the Act.

"Your re­quest is there­fore to be un­der­stood as re­quest­ing me to ex­er­cise my 'own ini­tia­tive' un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion and in par­tic­u­lar Sec­tion 136 (8), (9) and (15)." Richards con­tin­ued: "The re­marks of the chair­man, notwith­stand­ing, I do not con­sid­er that, as a com­plaint in this re­gard, your let­ter pro­vides a pri­ma fa­cie ba­sis in fact to war­rant the com­mence­ment, ef­fec­tive­ly, of the equiv­a­lent of im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion. "I, there­fore, do not pro­pose to in­voke the pre­scribed con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­ce­dures as re­ferred to above. Fur­ther I am con­fi­dent that with re­spect to all mat­ters be­fore it, the com­mis­sion will pro­ceed to dis­charge its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties ac­cord­ing to law and in ac­cor­dance with the tenets of fair­ness and fun­da­men­tal jus­tice."

St Cyr de­clined com­ment on the Pres­i­dent's re­sponse yes­ter­day. When the is­sue first broke, pri­or to Warn­er's re­quest, St Cyr had told the T&T Guardian he had not thought of re­sign­ing and had felt he could pos­si­bly re­cuse him­self from any of the is­sues in­volved in the mat­ter if they had to be probed by the com­mis­sion. Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MP Fitzger­ald Hinds, who has raised ques­tions about a $40 mil­lion NP con­tract award and the own­er of the Tu­na­puna house where the Prime Min­is­ter stayed, had writ­ten the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion seek­ing a probe of the mat­ter. Hinds al­so said of Richards re­ply to Warn­er: "I'm not at all sur­prised at the Pres­i­dent's re­ply. My sub­sist­ing faith and re­spect for the Pres­i­dent and the pres­i­den­cy is now vin­di­cat­ed. "We al­ways said while Dr St Cyr's in­ter­ven­tion was not nec­es­sary then, it was al­so not fa­tal to his hold­ing of of­fice and, in­deed, to the com­mis­sion's abil­i­ty to op­er­ate ei­ther."