A blighted tenure. That was Attorney General Anand Ramlogan’s view of Ken Gordon’s chairmanship of the Integrity Commission. Ramlogan waded into Gordon’s administration yesterday while speaking to reporters after the Parliament session. He was commenting on the spin-off furore of the recent Emailgate issue—in which Opposition Leader Keith Rowley, who broke Emailgate, is now accused of meeting with Gordon at the latter’s home on the e-mails prior to revealing them in Parliament. Rowley was not at yesterday’s Parliament. House Speaker Wade Mark said he had been granted leave of absence from yesterday’s session. On Gordon’s part of the most recent issue concerning the meeting, the AG said, “This is not the only blunder by Gordon. There was the raid on Newsday to unearth a reporter’s source when he (Gordon) had a public spat with former IC deputy chairman Gladys Gafoor, and there was the issue of that spat as well.
“Then there was the picture of Gordon with THA chairman Orville London at the height of the THA campaign when London was likely to be the main protagonist in the Milshirv issue which would have reached the IC... and now this. The tenure has been somewhat blighted, a very zig-zag and colourful one,” Ramlogan said expressing concern at Gordon’s reported comments on the meeting with Rowley. Ramlogan said Rowley’s position of taking the blame for the meeting didn’t suffice. He added: “The more Dr Rowley speaks, the deeper the hole he’s digging for himself.” Ramlogan alleged Rowley lied to T&T when the latter said he didn’t hide that he’d met Gordon since he had disclosed that in his parliamentary contribution when he spoke about the e-mails. “I publicly challenge Dr Rowley to produce the clip where he informed the Parliament he had such a meeting with Gordon prior to coming to the Parliament with his no confidence motion,” Ramlogan said. “I sat in the Parliament and listened to everything he said that day as I was to have responded to his statements and he at no time mentioned anything about any meeting with the Integrity Commission chairman,”
Ramlogan said the situation has opened up a “hornet’s nest and there are questions that simply won’t go away.” Ramlogan said Gordon published a legal opinion from an unnamed senior counsel advising the Integrity Commission was empowered to probe Emailgate: “When it was published it came at a time when the e-mail fiasco was backfiring on Dr Rowley and it was like adding kerosene on a fire,” Ramlogan said. “But since there was no IC, what does Mr Gordon mean when he said the IC had been advised by an unnamed senior counsel—why not name the senior counsel; why is the identity of this person so secretive; and why does it need to be protected? Is this senior counsel the lawyer representing Rowley in his court matter or before the Privileges Committees...having waived the secrecy of the legal advice, I find it strange he cannot say who gave the advice.” He said all this deepened the political conspiracy alleged. Ramlogan also queried how the meeting at Gordon’s home took place and whether this was done “contemporaneously sipping drinks.” See Page A7