New­ly ap­point­ed chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, Ha­dyn Git­tens, says he is hop­ing to make a dif­fer­ence to the of­fice.

Git­tens made the com­ment hours af­ter he was pre­sent­ed with his in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Git­tens stat­ed that he was ready for the tasks ahead at the in­de­pen­dent body.

“I feel very proud of the fact that I have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to hope­ful­ly make a dif­fer­ence in this im­por­tant realm and I look for­ward to the chal­lenges that lie ahead,” Git­tens said.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion ob­tained off the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent’s Face­book page, Git­tens is a busi­ness and fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant with more than 40 years of broad-based fi­nan­cial sec­tor ex­pe­ri­ence both as a mar­ket op­er­a­tor and as a reg­u­la­tor.

Git­tens served for some 28 years at the Roy­al Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ja­maica, where he rose to the po­si­tion of group head in cor­po­rate bank­ing. Af­ter this, he served as the gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Bank of St Lu­cia Lim­it­ed from Oc­to­ber 2013 to May 2016, and then as the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion from Au­gust 2017 to Ju­ly, 2020.

Git­tens re­places Prof Ra­jen­dra Ram­lo­gan, whose two-year tenure in of­fice was marked by fall­outs with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley over de­ci­sions to in­ves­ti­gate him fol­low­ing com­plaints by the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

Ram­lo­gan pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that the de­ci­sion to in­ves­ti­gate Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley three times did not come from him. That ra­tio­nale for in­ves­ti­ga­tions, Ram­lo­gan said, lies with the in­ves­ti­ga­tors em­ployed by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

Most re­cent­ly, Dr Row­ley lashed out at Ram­lo­gan in a re­sponse to an al­le­ga­tion from the for­mer chair­man that the in­sti­tu­tion was forced to op­er­ate with re­duced bud­gets in re­cent years, a mat­ter which the com­mis­sion has tak­en to court for a de­ter­mi­na­tion.

In a state­ment in re­sponse to the com­mis­sion’s com­plaint about un­der­fund­ing, PM Row­ley stat­ed, “I per­mit my­self to posit that maybe the is­sue is far too many ill-ad­vised and po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions have been em­barked up­on by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and more cir­cum­spect in­ves­ti­ga­tions need to be con­duct­ed in ac­cor­dance with the let­ter and spir­it of the Act.”

Yes­ter­day, Git­tens re­fused to com­ment on the con­tro­ver­sy which en­gulfed his pre­de­ces­sor and how he would han­dle such is­sues hav­ing come in­to of­fice.

How­ev­er, he was hope­ful that his pre­de­ces­sors will as­sist in nav­i­gat­ing the way for­ward. He said he hopes to meet with the com­mis­sion’s mem­ber­ship next week.

“The first task and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to meet with the board of com­mis­sion­ers, which will be done ear­ly next week, and meet with the staff and com­ing out of the meet­ing, there will be clar­i­ty on the way ahead. I will kind of cer­tain­ly have the ef­forts of pre­vi­ous chair­men to kind of fall be­hind and to lean on,” he said.

Mean­while, for­mer chair­man Ram­lo­gan en­dorsed Git­tens in his new role.

Once again not­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the of­fice, Ram­lo­gan stat­ed, “I cer­tain­ly wish him all the best, the coun­try needs the com­mis­sion to con­tin­ue to do its work and I cer­tain­ly wish him all the best.”

Mean­while, giv­en the re­cent wran­glings at the com­mis­sion, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath yes­ter­day said steer­ing it to­wards im­par­tial­i­ty is a path Git­tens should take and must main­tain to en­sure pub­lic con­fi­dence.

“The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has to op­er­ate in a man­ner that will sug­gest and give the out­look that they are not be­ing po­lit­i­cal­ly dri­ven and rather, they will take on re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in en­sur­ing in­tegri­ty and in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­duct­ed in a man­ner that they are de­serv­ing,” Ra­goonath said.

He con­tend­ed that there should be no po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence and that trans­paren­cy must be para­mount, adding the com­mis­sion “should fa­cil­i­tate a lev­el of as much trans­paren­cy and in­tegri­ty as it pos­si­bly can get from such an in­sti­tu­tion.”