Political scientist Prof Selwyn Ryan wrote Prime Minister Patrick Manning on October 20 of last year, asking to be excused from the meeting of the round table that prepared the working document on the latest draft constitution ’having regard to some of the positions’ which he took on the issue in his column in the Express newspaper.

’I hasten to add that my concerns were not ad hominem (accusations difficult to prove) but had the public interest as their prime concern,’ Ryan wrote.

This effectively ended Ryan’s participation in the round table which operates out of the Office of the Prime Minister.

In a written response, the Office of the Prime Minister stated Manning ’appreciates the position conveyed in your letter and takes the opportunity to thank you sincerely for the tremendous contribution you have made as a member of the round table, in particular the role you played at public consultations held over a period of three months in 2006-2007’.

A copy of Ryan’s letter was made available to the Express last week bearing his address, his signature and a stamp from the Office of the Prime Minister dated October 21, 2008 but makes no mention of the Justice Ministry proposal.

It was accompanied by a copy of the Office of the Prime Minister Draft Constitution Secretariat’s reply to Ryan dated November 4, 2008, signed by the Permanent Secretary to the Prime Minister, Sandra Marchack.

In an interview with the Sunday Express, Ryan confirmed he wrote the letter to Manning and has no problem with the contents of his letters being published but expressed some concern that they had been leaked.

’I have no regrets for doing that but that somebody should leak the letters to the press, I have my suspicions as to who did it but I don’t want to go on record. Somebody was enquiring about them,’ Ryan said without offering any further comment.

On September 30 during a Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) forum on constitutional reform, Ryan said he resigned from the round table soon after it came up with the idea of a Ministry of Justice to govern certain administrative aspects of the Judiciary and disclosed he had ’sent a letter to the Prime Minister indicating that I did not think it was appropriate for me to continue since we disagreed on the fundamentals’ but gave no details.