CLI­CO Pol­i­cy hold­ers call on Duprey to do the right thing

The Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group yes­ter­day sug­gest­ed that for­mer CL Fi­nan­cial chair­man Lawrence Duprey give up the Cha­co­nia Gold medal that was be­stowed up­on him in 1999 for his in­volve­ment in the col­lapse of the com­pa­ny and his fail­ure to show up at the Com­mis­sion on En­quiry in­to the mat­ter last week.

In a re­lease on the is­sue, the group, while not di­rect­ly say­ing so, tried to use moral sua­sion by point­ing out: "It should be not­ed that we do not ex­press a view at this time on whether Mr Lawrence An­dr� Duprey CMTT, should con­tin­ue to be the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of such an ho­n­our, but in­stead call up­on him in the words of His Ex­cel­len­cy Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Thomas Aquinas Car­mona 'to do the right thing be­cause it's the right thing to do.' A word to the wise is suf­fi­cient."

The pol­i­cy­hold­ers group point­ed out that a per­son ceas­es to be a mem­ber of the Dis­tin­guished So­ci­ety of T&T (DSTT) if he or she is stripped of the award.

"Ac­cord­ing­ly, it has not es­caped our at­ten­tion that this is the same gen­tle­man who was award­ed the na­tion's sec­ond high­est ho­n­our, the Cha­co­nia Gold Medal, in 1999 by then Pres­i­dent ANR Robin­son on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of T&T for ser­vice in the field of busi­ness. More­over, it is al­so our un­der­stand­ing that the Cha­co­nia Medal Gold is usu­al­ly award­ed to a per­son who has per­formed long and mer­i­to­ri­ous ser­vice to T&T tend­ing to pro­mote the na­tion­al wel­fare or strength­en the com­mu­ni­ty spir­it.

"The let­ters "CMTT" are placed af­ter his/her name on all oc­ca­sions. How­ev­er, a per­son ceas­es to be a mem­ber or hon­orary mem­ber of the DSTT up­on the re­vo­ca­tion/strip­ping of his/her award by the Pres­i­dent," the re­lease said.The Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group said in light of the "cow­ard­ly" no-show by Duprey and oth­ers last week at the Sir An­tho­ny Col­man Com­mis­sion of En­quiry, it be­lieves the time has come for so­ci­ety to send a clear mes­sage that enough is enough.

"We as tax­pay­ing cit­i­zens of this coun­try must find a way let them know in no un­cer­tain terms that we are not pre­pared to tol­er­ate this type of self­ish and dis­re­spect­ful be­hav­iour as we pur­sue our le­git­i­mate right to know what tran­spired at Cli­co and CLF," the state­ment said.It al­so re­ferred to what Col­man said last week about his lack of pow­er un­der the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry Act to ex­tra­dite Duprey to T&T.

"Nonethe­less, we re­main con­fi­dent that all is not lost, nor is it too late for Mr. Duprey, in par­tic­u­lar, to re­con­sid­er his po­si­tion, since we are cer­tain that giv­en the im­por­tance of his ev­i­dence, should he have a change of heart, the Com­mis­sion would be more than will­ing to ac­com­mo­date him even if it means con­ven­ing a spe­cial sit­ting, mind­ful that the same rules of en­gage­ment would ap­ply."