(Trinidad Express) President George Maxwell Richards is not explaining. He is not resigning. But he is sorry “for an error of judgment.“ And he thinks that it is time the country moves on.
That in a nutshell was the President’s position as he delivered his second address to the nation on the Integrity Commission imbroglio last night.
The eight-minute statement came four days after his return from vacation overseas. Richards was resolute that he was not going to enter into a public debate on the allegations and claims made in relation to persons who had been appointed to the commission.
“In the face of the resignation of Justice (Zainool) Hosein and subsequently those of Mr (Jeffrey) McFarlane and Fr (Henry) Charles, there have been calls for me to explain what could have led to those resignations and therefore to reveal what might or might not have been said between myself and those nominees prior to their appointments … in order, perhaps, to establish, inter alia, the veracity of what has been said by them,” Richards said.
But the President was adamant that any presidential consultation was private.
“May I say that, as President, I will not put in the public domain the conversations, of a confidential nature, that I held with anyone concerning the invitations to serve. That, in my view, is unseemly and not befitting the Office,” he said.
He took full responsibility for his actions, saying that the questions he had raised in his previous address on May 15 – in which he asked whether persons selected should not have been more forthcoming, more exacting in their self-assessment and qualified fitness for purpose – were never meant to absolve him from responsibility or to cast blame.
The President also took full responsibility for the people he appointed and for the decisions that were made.
“The Integrity in Public Life Act is clear … that the President appoints after consulting both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.
After consultation, the President may decide that his choices stand, or he may choose to take a different choice based on the consultation or for any other reason. Confirming an invitation to serve does not mean that someone else was party to the confirmation or directed it,” he emphasised, in an apparent reference to the insinuations that Prime Minister Patrick Manning was somehow behind the change in the deputy chairmanship.
