Yvonne?Ba­boolal

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he has no con­fi­dence in the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion but, at the same time, it is an in­sti­tu­tion that has to deal with al­le­ga­tions against peo­ple in pub­lic life.

The Gov­ern­ment was not in­to pros­e­cut­ing or per­se­cut­ing any­body and could tack­le cor­rup­tion by pro­vid­ing in­sti­tu­tions with leg­is­la­tion to em­pow­er them to work more ef­fec­tive­ly, he said.

Row­ley said so dur­ing his ad­dress to a packed ball­room at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre at an an­ti-cor­rup­tion con­fer­ence, ti­tled Un­mask the Cor­rupt, host­ed by the T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute.

He re­spond­ed to com­ments from Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al chair­man, Jose Car­los Ugaz, a plat­form speak­er, on pub­lic con­cern over the Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald and Mal­colm Jones is­sues.

Ugaz in­di­cat­ed there was pub­lic per­cep­tion the Gov­ern­ment kept re­fer­ring cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions to the po­lice but the mat­ters were not in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

The Op­po­si­tion has al­leged that Hous­ing Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, when she was com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter in 2008, used her of­fice to se­cure a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion house at the up­scale Fi­delis Heights for her com­mon-law part­ner, Michael Carew, and helped him pay for it.

The mat­ter is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion but there have been pub­lic calls for her to step down. Row­ley has said she would not be fired on the ba­sis of al­le­ga­tions.

Jones, shot in­to the lime­light when the State dropped a US$109 mil­lion case against him ini­ti­at­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, at­tor­ney gen­er­al in the last Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The PP gov­ern­ment ac­cused Jones of breach of his fidu­cia­ry du­ty and al­leged mis­man­age­ment in the con­struc­tion of Petrotrin's World Gas to Liq­uid Plant. Row­ley de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion to quash the case.

At the an­ti-cor­rup­tion sem­i­nar yes­ter­day the PM ba­si­cal­ly re­peat­ed his ear­li­er po­si­tion on those two mat­ters and cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions against peo­ple in pub­lic life in gen­er­al.

He said he knew a lit­tle bit about al­le­ga­tions since many were made against him in Par­lia­ment. How­ev­er, he had to go be­fore a com­mit­tee where the al­le­ga­tions were re­ferred to for in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he said.

In one in­stance, he was called up­on by a for­mer prime min­is­ter to ac­count for a miss­ing $10 mil­lion, he said. "In cas­es like that one can re­ly on­ly on in­sti­tu­tions," he added.

Row­ley said when he formed his Cab­i­net, he told mem­bers if any­one felt he was com­ing to gov­ern­ment to en­rich him­self that was the time to leave. "No one left," he added.

He said T&T had been steadi­ly bar­rel­ing to­wards the in­ter­na­tion­al prize of be­ing ranked among the most cor­rupt coun­tries in the world.

In 2001, T&T ranked 32 on the an­ti-cor­rup­tion in­dex. In 2004, 53 and in 2011, 91. Be­tween 2011 and 2015, T&T moved back to 79, but with the same score, he said.

"It ap­pears that we were at one time rea­son­ably de­cent but in a 15-year pe­ri­od we have gone to be­ing among the worst in the world," he said.

The Gov­ern­ment looked at coun­tries that were in T&T's po­si­tion and went on to im­prove its rank­ings, like Greece, Sene­gal and the UK, and found it was be­cause it tack­led cor­rup­tion in pub­lic life, he said.