Richard Lord

Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards says me­dia mogul Ken Gor­don is im­pec­ca­ble and best suit­ed to be the chair­man of In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, while Gor­don says he in­tends to main­tain his in­de­pen­dence as he ac­cepts his new job. The Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly on Oc­to­ber 16 that Gor­don was to be ap­point­ed new In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man. Pres­i­dent Richards ad­min­is­tered the Oath of Of­fice on Gor­don dur­ing a five-minute cer­e­mo­ny at Knowsley, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing. Gor­don be­came the third chair­man of the com­mis­sion to be ap­point­ed in two years, af­ter the 2009 res­ig­na­tion of the Gor­don Deane com­mis­sion.

The res­ig­na­tions were trig­gered by a High Court rul­ing against com­mis­sion­ers in a mat­ter brought by then Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Kei­th Row­ley. Lat­er in May 2009, Fr Hen­ry Charles was ap­point­ed to head a new com­mis­sion but he and oth­ers quit with­in ten days of that ap­point­ment. For­mer In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Dr Er­ic St Cyr was lat­er ap­point­ed chair­man. He re­signed ear­li­er this month af­ter pub­licly stat­ing that man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), Jear­lean John, was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion with­out in­form­ing her of the probe. Gor­don, in his first im­promp­tu in­ter­view af­ter his ap­point­ment, said he in­tend­ed to main­tain his in­de­pen­dence in the ex­e­cu­tion of his job.

He in­sist­ed that an ap­par­ent favour he may have from the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment can­not un­der­mine his in­tegri­ty. "The whole idea of the life we live is to be in­de­pen­dent and think in­de­pen­dent­ly, re­gard­less to whether you are pleased with the Gov­ern­ment or not...That has noth­ing to do with it," he said. Asked if peo­ple may see him as a sup­port­er of the Gov­ern­ment based on his re­cent ex­pres­sions of sup­port for the state of emer­gency, Gor­don said: "These things aren't de­ter­mined by what you say, they are de­ter­mined even­tu­al­ly by what you do." Asked if his was a dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to make to ac­cept the new job, he said: "It re­quired some care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, yes."

Gor­don said he would meet with the com­mis­sion­ers next week Mon­day or Tues­day. Ear­li­er in an ad­dress to the cer­e­mo­ny, Pres­i­dent Richards said Gor­don's ap­point­ment, which takes ef­fect from No­vem­ber 1, was made af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley. Richards said Gor­don was "unique­ly qual­i­fied for the task that lies ahead." The Pres­i­dent said Gor­don "has im­pec­ca­ble cre­den­tials, he is com­plete­ly in­de­pen­dent mind­ed, he is a strong leader who un­der­stands the con­cept of in­tegri­ty in pub­lic life and who will re­spect the pro­vi­sions of that Act." He said he want­ed to ex­press his grat­i­tude to Gor­don for ac­cept­ing "to serve in what is go­ing to be a very chal­leng­ing as­sign­ment. "We have every con­fi­dence that he will be up to the task."

About Ken­neth Gor­don

Re­tired busi­ness­man Ken­neth Gor­don, who was yes­ter­day sworn in as the new chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, is best known for the piv­otal role he played in the de­vel­op­ment of Caribbean print and elec­tron­ic me­dia over sev­er­al decades. Born in 1930, Gor­don at­tend­ed St Mary's Col­lege, Port-of-Spain. Af­ter grad­u­at­ing in 1948, he took a job at Red­i­fu­sion as a broad­cast jour­nal­ist. With­in a decade, he be­came one of the first non-whites to move in­to a man­age­r­i­al po­si­tion in the me­dia, tak­ing charge at the coun­try's on­ly ra­dio ser­vice.

When T&T's first tele­vi­sion sta­tion, Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT) was launched in 1961, Gor­don served as pro­gramme man­ag­er. He moved to the Trinidad Cham­ber of Com­merce where he served as gen­er­al man­ag­er for sev­en years. Gor­don be­came man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Trinidad Ex­press in Feb­ru­ary 1969 and un­der his lead­er­ship, the news­pa­per evolved the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Net­work (CCN) with the ad­di­tion, on Au­gust 31, 1991, of CCN TV6 which be­came the first in­de­pen­dent­ly op­er­at­ed tele­vi­sion sta­tion in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean.

As chair­man/chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of CCN, Gor­don helped es­tab­lish in­dige­nous pri­vate­ly-owned me­dia through­out the re­gion. He co­found­ed the Na­tion news­pa­per in Bar­ba­dos, the Star­broek News in Guyana, the Ob­serv­er in Ja­maica and the To­ba­go News. He was al­so re­spon­si­ble for strength­en­ing frag­ile me­dia hous­es in Grena­da, St Lu­cia and Do­mini­ca. Gor­don was the found­ing chair­man of the Caribbean News Agency (CANA) and was for many years pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Pub­lish­ers' and Broad­cast­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (CP­BA). In Oc­to­ber 2000, he was award­ed $100,000 in li­bel dam­ages by the High Court in a case in­volv­ing then Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo who called him a "pseu­do-racist."

Apart from his decades of in­volve­ment in Caribbean me­dia, Gor­don did a brief stint in pol­i­tics when he was ap­point­ed a sen­a­tor and min­is­ter in the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) ad­min­is­tra­tion of ANR Robin­son. He served as Min­is­ter of In­dus­try, En­ter­prise and Tourism from 1986 to 1990. In 2003, the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­ered im­pos­ing a state of emer­gency in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It was one of the ma­jor rec­om­men­da­tions of the Ken Gor­don Com­mit­tee Re­port on Crime pre­sent­ed to Cab­i­net in May of that year. Gor­don's next non-me­dia ven­ture fol­lowed his elec­tion as pres­i­dent of the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) in Au­gust 2005. He took on that man­tle at a time when the sport was mired in prob­lems, with play­er strikes, con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the Dig­i­cel deal and crip­pling debts.

Gor­don tried to use his busi­ness ex­pe­ri­ence to turn things round at the WICB, but his lack of crick­et­ing pedi­gree was a hin­drance. He found him­self in­creas­ing­ly at odds with play­ers and oth­er board mem­bers and even­tu­al­ly stood down in Ju­ly 2007. Last April 1, Gor­don was ap­point­ed chair­man of the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Board (EDB) a new­ly-es­tab­lished en­ti­ty in­tend­ed to play an ad­vi­so­ry and im­ple­men­ta­tion role in the strate­gic man­age­ment of T&T's econ­o­my. Gor­don is mar­ried to Mar­guerite, a well-known writer who is con­sid­ered the doyenne of Caribbean eti­quette, and is a fa­ther of four.