SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Tuney to rep­re­sent Min­istry of Fi­nance

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) Prakash Ra­madar says his par­ty chair­man Joseph Toney has not re­ceived any "cur­ry favour" from the Gov­ern­ment. He said so yes­ter­day, af­ter a news con­fer­ence, in re­sponse to re­ports that lawyers who had been rep­re­sent­ing the Gov­ern­ment in the Cli­co in­quiry were fired last week and had been re­placed by Seenath Jairam, SC, lead­ing Jagdeo Singh and Toney, who is go­ing up again for re-elec­tion as COP chair­man on Oc­to­ber 28.

Ra­mad­har said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship was about fair­ness. He said a se­lect­ed few were get­ting all the jobs and the hir­ing of the new batch of lawyers was one way the Gov­ern­ment was lev­el­ling the play­ing field. He said, "You can­not have a se­lect few, whether le­gal or oth­er­wise, get­ting all the work all the time."

The news con­fer­ence was called to in­tro­duce can­di­dates for the COP's up­com­ing in­ter­nal elec­tions. Toney told the me­dia he was hired by the Gov­ern­ment to rep­re­sent the Min­istry of Fi­nance for the pe­ri­od when Karen Tesheira was min­is­ter dur­ing the HCU/Cli­co fi­as­co.

Asked why he was hired, Toney said the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties prob­a­bly saw him in ac­tion and was prob­a­bly im­pressed. He said dur­ing the PNM regime of 2002-2010, he nev­er re­ceived any state briefs. Toney, Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan and Rekha Ramjit are can­di­dates for the post of COP chair­man.