Richard?Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day called on Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley to re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly in the wake of word from the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion that its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the May 2013 Email­gate mat­ter had been closed.She made the com­ment in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day while mak­ing a state­ment on the mat­ter.

She be­gan by re­call­ing that it was ex­act­ly two years ago when Row­ley, in pre­sent­ing a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence against her, told the Par­lia­ment about a thread of 31 emails which he said was al­leged­ly ex­changed among Per­sad-Bisses­sar, then at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Cab­i­net min­is­ters Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan and Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and then na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er Gary Grif­fith.

The mat­ter was re­ferred to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion for in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Row­ley days af­ter his pre­sen­ta­tion in Par­lia­ment, while Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on the po­lice to in­ves­ti­gate the al­leged emails.But in a let­ter to Per­sad-Bisses­sar's at­tor­ney Is­rael Khan, SC, on Tues­day, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion said it was "sat­is­fied that there are no or in­suf­fi­cient grounds for con­tin­u­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion... and ac­cord­ing­ly this in­ves­ti­ga­tion is here­by ter­mi­nat­ed."

Yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so re­mind­ed leg­is­la­tors that Google Inc had pre­vi­ous­ly filed a sworn de­c­la­ra­tion in a Cal­i­for­nia, USA, court con­firm­ing that the email ac­count anan@gmail.com (which was said to be that of Ram­lo­gan) "did not ex­ist and were there­fore fake."She re­called that Row­ley had "re­peat­ed­ly ex­pressed a clear pref­er­ence for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion over that of the po­lice."

She said con­se­quent­ly, Row­ley "must now do the ho­n­ourable thing and ten­der his res­ig­na­tion as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion and MP for Diego Mar­tin West forth­with."Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Email­gate mat­ter was a "treach­er­ous and evil plan" which "was de­signed to de­stroy me and mem­bers of my Gov­ern­ment."

She said she was hap­py to be vin­di­cat­ed by the rul­ing of the com­mis­sion, as it con­firmed "Email­gate was a dan­ger­ous po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy that was doomed to fail be­cause there was ab­solute­ly no truth to it."She said Row­ley, in mak­ing his al­le­ga­tion, was "not sim­ply care­less, he was de­lib­er­ate­ly reck­less and ir­re­spon­si­ble."

Not end of road, says PNM leader

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Row­ley, who was sus­pend­ed from Par­lia­ment over the is­sue, said he was not giv­ing any se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to the PM's call for his res­ig­na­tion."That is 'Kam­la-speak' and she is speak­ing to her­self and her MPs in Par­lia­ment. The rest of the pop­u­la­tion know what is tak­ing place," he said, adding he had no in­ten­tion of re­sign­ing as Op­po­si­tion Leader.

He in­sist­ed the po­lice "in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing and no mat­ter what turns up at the end of the probe, it does not mean that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was not war­rant­ed."Row­ley said Per­sad-Bisses­sar, more than any­one else in the coun­try, should know what was avail­able to an MP with in­for­ma­tion about pub­lic of­fi­cials re­quir­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

He re­called it was Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as an Op­po­si­tion MP, who took sim­i­lar ac­tion in an al­leged mat­ter in­volv­ing for­mer PNM coun­cil­lor Dansam Dhan­sook and two PNM gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, Franklin Khan and Er­ic Williams. Those al­le­ga­tions were sub­se­quent­ly re­cant­ed and the mat­ter dis­con­tin­ued.