Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) Prakash Ra­mad­har is call­ing on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er to "de­sist" from moves to buy the T&T Mir­ror news­pa­per. Warn­er has pub­licly an­nounced his de­sire to ac­quire the T&T Mir­ror and News­day. Ra­mad­har, the Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter, said at a meet­ing on Mon­day night the COP's na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive con­sid­ered the mat­ter and its im­pli­ca­tions for good gov­er­nance which was in­clud­ed in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship man­i­festo.

He said that pol­i­cy-de­ci­sion re­quired pub­lic of­fi­cials to con­duct them­selves ac­cord­ing to the high­est stan­dards of eth­i­cal and po­lit­i­cal be­hav­iour in the pub­lic in­ter­est. Ra­mad­har said that meant Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters were re­quired to put their own com­mer­cial or busi­ness in­ter­ests in the care and con­duct of oth­ers while they held of­fice.

He said re­cent­ly the Min­is­ter of Health had to choose be­tween his pri­vate busi­ness and of­fi­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and "such stan­dards are ap­plic­a­ble to all. This is not just a mat­ter of law and le­gal­i­ty but a mat­ter of up­hold­ing the high­est stan­dards." Ra­mad­har added: "The Con­gress of the Peo­ple de­mands that this min­is­ter (Warn­er) im­me­di­ate­ly de­sist from fur­ther pur­suit of this un­ac­cept­able course of deal­ing. "Fail­ing to do so, the min­is­ter must make the choice whether he wish­es to pur­sue his per­son­al, com­mer­cial or oth­er in­ter­ests or act in the 'pub­lic in­ter­est' as the core val­ues of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ex­toll."