Ken Ali

?The gov­ern­ment pro­cure­ment regime "would come in­to ef­fect ear­ly in the new fis­cal year," promised Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. The as­sur­ance was solemn­ly giv­en in Man­ning's 2007 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion. In­deed, the pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dure for pur­chas­es in the pub­lic sec­tor has been a work in progress since a Sep­tem­ber 2005 White Pa­per. The sys­tem was meant to ap­ply to all gov­ern­ment min­istries, statu­to­ry boards, re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties, re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and state en­ter­pris­es.

That sup­pos­ed­ly in­clud­ed the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott), the state be­he­moth that, ac­cord­ing to for­mer line min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, has presided over a stu­pen­dous $20 bil­lion in pub­lic con­tracts. The con­ven­tion­al wis­dom, framed by eye-pop­ping tes­ti­mo­ny at the Uff Com­mis­sion, is that Ude­cott's ten­der­ing and pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures were of­ten bla­tant­ly shifty or skewed and the de­vel­op­ment over­lords played fast and loose with the pub­lic purse. Ude­cott has field­ed more al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion than any oth­er tax­pay­er-owned en­ti­ty in mod­ern T&T, dat­ing back to claims of bid-rig­ging in 2003.

Gene Miles, the dare­dev­il cor­rup­tion-buster of a gen­er­a­tion ago, would sure­ly have frozen in hor­ror at the laun­dry list of al­leged sleaze at the Gov­ern­ment's de­vel­op­ment cor­po­ra­tion. Squan­der­ma­nia and con­temp­tu­ous dis­re­gard for ac­count­abil­i­ty and pro­bity are a Ude­cott pan­dem­ic, if in­sid­er ev­i­dence is to be be­lieved. Let's cite the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs' tow­er, where two bid­ders re­port­ed­ly prof­fered less than $350 mil­lion each, but the deal was hand­ed to a com­pa­ny at $368 mil­lion.

The is­sue is fur­ther smeared with damn­ing claims of fam­i­ly links with the suc­cess­ful bid­ing com­pa­ny. The Chancery Lane, San Fer­nan­do, project was re­port­ed­ly tossed to a con­trac­tor who ten­dered some $45 mil­lion more than oth­ers. In the midst of those messy mat­ters, Ude­cott is pur­su­ing a valiant and rear­guard ef­fort to have the Uff probe shut down, af­ter scor­ing cru­cial vic­to­ries with the res­ig­na­tions of com­mis­sion­ers Is­rael Khan and Ken­neth Sir­ju.

To be sure, the Gov­ern­ment has af­firmed its com­mit­ment to "the preser­va­tion and pro­tec­tion of the com­mis­sion," through a state­ment by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie af­ter the gazetting slip-up. "The pub­lic is en­ti­tled to le­git­i­mate­ly ex­pect a full re­port and rec­om­men­da­tions in re­la­tion to the mat­ters be­fore the com­mis­sion­ers," Je­re­mie told Par­lia­ment. The sce­nario prompts the query about why is Ude­cott vig­or­ous­ly seek­ing to top­ple the probe amid the un­am­bigu­ous de­c­la­ra­tion by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

As a tax­pay­er-owned pub­lic en­ti­ty, shouldn't the cor­po­ra­tion be ped­dling gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy? Did line min­is­ter Dr Emi­ly Gaynor Dick-Forde sanc­tion Ude­cott's move to quash an in­ves­ti­ga­tion set up and sup­port­ed by her gov­ern­ment? Or did the cor­po­ra­tion de­fy her on this mat­ter? If so, does this con­firm Row­ley's de­pic­tion of Ude­cott as a rogue en­ter­prise?

Would Dick-Forde cen­sure the cor­po­ra­tion's je­fes sim­i­lar to the man­ner in which she chal­lenged Mar­garet Chow fol­low­ing the lat­ter's coura­geous res­ig­na­tion af­ter belling the cat at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion?

Would the min­is­ter move as zeal­ous­ly as she did for a probe at the Cleaver Heights hous­ing project? Is the cor­po­ra­tion with a cor­rup­tion bo­gey "act­ing at vari­ance with the wish­es of the pop­u­la­tion and in di­rect de­fi­ance of the Pres­i­dent and Cab­i­net," as Row­ley sur­mis­es?

The sober­ing re­al­i­ty is that the Patrick Man­ning regime has nev­er dis­played in­dif­fer­ence to the Ude­cott jum­ble, with the Prime Min­is­ter even laud­ing chair­man Calder Hart in the midst of dra­mat­ic ex­pos­es be­fore the com­mis­sion.

In a trou­bling ut­ter­ance, even by Man­ning's stan­dards, he gen­er­ous­ly en­dorsed Hart at last April's for­mal open­ing of the cost­ly wa­ter­front project, for his "in­de­fati­ga­ble ef­forts" in that and "many oth­er" projects "that are spring­ing up all over Trinidad and To­ba­go."

With that re­sound­ing ap­proval, is the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion two-tim­ing the un­sus­pect­ing pop­u­la­tion through stout pub­lic sup­port for a probe and pri­vate ef­forts to scut­tle the in­ves­ti­ga­tion? Or has Hart sim­ply be­come too big, even for Man­ning to han­dle? Is there trep­i­da­tion along the cor­ri­dors of pow­er in mar­shalling Ude­cott? In­deed, with the pub­lic tes­ti­mo­ny, cou­pled with rel­e­vant doc­u­ments, the po­lice can un­der­take cor­rup­tion in­quiries and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions can lay charges–even be­fore the com­mis­sion­ers present their re­port.

Tak­ing Franklin Khan and Er­ic Williams through the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is one thing, but would the po­lice dare to con­front Ude­cott fat cats?

Through the en­tire Ude­cott ig­nominy, the most burn­ing ques­tion is just who is look­ing af­ter the in­ter­est of cit­i­zens, who are bur­dened by the cor­po­ra­tion's al­leged mis­deeds. Who is de­fend­ing the cause of the pub­lic, as it is be­set with high­er tax­es amid Ude­cott's $20 bil­lion bud­get, de­void of fi­nan­cial trans­paren­cy?

Ken Ali

co-hosts the week­day morn­ing dis­cus­sion pro­gramme from 6 am to 9 am on 106.1 FM