Confidence in Integrity Commission low—PM

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has said she has no quarrel with the Integrity Commission but public confidence in the commission remains low. She was responding to the commission’s views on her recent platform statement about the PNM-controlled THA’s Milshirv project and the commission.

The commission subsequently wrote to President George Maxwell Richards seeking his support after Persad-Bissessar questioned its fairness. Persad-Bissessar, on the TOP campaign trail, had reportedly alluded to the “stony silence” of the commission on an alleged $310 million transaction with Tobago’s Milshirv Properties project that the commission was expected to investigate.

Noting its subsequent comments, Persad Bissessar said in a statement: “I have no quarrel with the Integrity Commission. I merely voiced what many members of the public believe that the Integrity Commission is inconsistent with the way it reacts and pronounces on matters before it, rushing to make public statements selectively on certain matters while remaining stonily silent on others of even greater public importance and urgency.

“It is for reasons such as this, among others, that public confidence in the impartiality of the commission remains so low.”