The commissioners for the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry (CoI) are looking to wrap up as many sessions as possible before the May 11 general elections roll around.
Before the commencement of the 48th hearing yesterday, Chairman Sir Richard Cheltenham publicly announced that the final sitting before elections will be determined sometime in March.
“Because of the general elections… we will have to get ourselves out of the way,” Cheltenham said. He continued, “The time has not yet come and in the course of our two weeks in February, we will tell you what time in March we will sit and that will be the last time we will sit [before elections]…to let the people get on with their business.”
In early 2014, Cheltenham, a Barbadian national, along with Jamaican Queen’s Counsel (QC) Jacqueline Samuels-Brown and Trinidad and Tobago Senior Counsel (SC) Seenath Jairam were sworn in as commissioners by President Donald Ramotar.
Since the commission’s commencement of public hearings in April, last year, there have been complaints that the sessions were being drawn out with no clear end in sight.
Earlier this month, the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) attorney Basil Williams questioned whether the commission should have resumed yesterday, given the pending general elections. Williams had said that in the previous sessions the commissioners had expressed reservations at the inquiry resuming in a pre-elections period.
