Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley says he is ready to go to jail for not responding to a request by the Integrity Commission to furnish them with additional information relating to his 2004 Declaration of Income Assets and Liabilities.
Targeting Integrity Commission chairman Zainool Hosein at the People’s National Movement’s public meeting at Embacadere, San Fernando, yesterday, Rowley said he was currently busy with the people’s business of putting the People’s Partnership out of government at the September 7 general elections.
“Well, let me tell Mr Zainool Hosein something this evening, it was Sir Alexander Bustamante who said if a politician hasn’t been to jail he hasn’t been all over the country and if I have to go to jail as a result of not responding to you in 14 days, come I am ready to go. “Because between now and September 7, I am busy with the people’s business. I am busy putting this Government out of office and if that question could have waited for 11 years, it could wait for 11 weeks,” Rowley said.
In a defiant mood, he said he believes the letter was a reaction to his criticism of the contract awarded to Government financier Super Industrial Services Ltd for $400 million Beetham Waste Water Treatment Plant and the commission’s failure to investigate the matter. He said after making those comments at Woodford Square, Port-of-Spain, on August 15, the commission sent the letter requesting additional information on his declaration, threatening that if he did not comply within 14 days legal action would be taken against him.
“Having said that on Saturday, I got a letter dated two days before Saturday, which I received two days after Saturday, opening an investigation into something that I filed 11 years ago,” he said.
“They don’t have enough information about the $400 million which they (Government) thief in the Beetham Waste Water Treatment Plant, but they have enough time and information to go and ask me some stupidness about something that I can’t understand about something from 11 years ago.”
He added, “What is worst, suddenly they get spunk, you know they can’t tell you the story behind the two Range Rovers with the same chassis number. They can’t tell you about all the complaints they had about ministerial misconduct in this Government, but they could tell me, they giving me 14 days to respond and if I don’t respond, they will publish my name in the Gazette and then they will proceed to take me to the High Court.”
He said after the resignation of former commissioner Sebastian Ventour over the closure of the Section 34 probe, Hosein should have left the commission as well. He said Hosein was operating in conflict. Saying that his life was an open book, Rowley’s message for Hosein was, “Mr Hosein, you cannot question my integrity because my life is an open book.”