Trinidad PM declared property purchase to Integrity body
(Trinidad Guardian) - Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley says his Tobago townhouse is fully declared and legal action is being examined against United National Congress MP Saddam Hosein for suggesting otherwise.
Rowley on Friday displayed his Integrity Commission Form A where he declared the purchase of his Inez Gate townhouse to the commission.
“And I’ve passed this matter to my lawyer to determine whether I’ve been slandered by UNC MP Saddam Hosein,” Rowley said during a media briefing called to address Hosein’s recent claims that he (PM) hadn’t declared the property to the commission and had broken integrity law.
“I have no questions to answer and in the event the commission has questions for me, I stand ready to cooperate on any questions. But there’s no question they can ask me I can’t answer—none!” Rowley said from Tobago, where he’d gone following his return from Barbados’s celebration of becoming a republic.
He trashed Hosein’s claims that when the UNC checked the commission last week, there was no declaration for Rowley’s $1.2 million property bought from Tobago businessman Allan Warner.
On Thursday, Hosein filed a complaint with the commission seeking an investigation of whether Rowley breached Integrity law.
“Investigate what?” Rowley asked, dismissing the allegations as part of the UNC’s election time “playbook” of character assassination. He deemed Hosein’s claims part of UNC’s bid to assist the Progressive Democratic Patriots, the PNM’s rivals for Monday’s THA election. He noted the AV Drilling issue as part of a similar tactic the UNC used before, where also he’d sued the UNC’s Roodal Moonilal.
Rowley said the UNC’s latest “brazen attempt” was meant to imply criminal conduct on the part of a Tobago-born Prime Minister and assassinate his character. He said the UNC sought to score election week political points in a “...deliberate strategy to mislead and manipulate the population.”
He queried why attorney Hosein, the UNC’s shadow Attorney General, didn’t know the Integrity format when he, as an MP, also had to fill out such forms.
Rowley said the minute anyone says they’d found out from the commission what one’s declaration is, it should raise alarm bells since the Integrity in Public Life Act requires two forms to be filled out—but one is secret and confidential and unavailable for public viewing.