Yvonne Ba­boolal

New­ly-ap­point­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan is call­ing for an ex­pe­di­tious probe in­to for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's in­volve­ment in the Heights of Gua­napo church project. Ram­lo­gan's call came af­ter a re­cent dis­clo­sure by ar­chi­tect Stephen Mendes con­firm­ing Man­ning's in­volve­ment in the project. Man­ning's spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er, Rev Ju­liana Pe­na, is linked to this church. Ram­lo­gan said he sup­port­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ear­li­er re­quest for a crim­i­nal probe in­to the mat­ter, but he want­ed it to be an ex­pe­di­tious one, or else it would be swept un­der the car­pet.

"Re­mem­ber the mat­ter is al­ready be­fore the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. Over a month has passed," he said. He slammed the in­ef­fi­cien­cy and lack­adaisi­cal at­ti­tude of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, in the wake of a news­pa­per re­port in which Mendes broke his si­lence on Man­ning's in­volve­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, dur­ing a May 15 news con­fer­ence, had pro­duced a May 2 let­ter writ­ten by Mendes, ad­dressed to for­mer Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T chair­man, Calder Hart. In the let­ter, Mendes, who said he was asked by Pe­na to de­sign the church "pro bono," spoke about "PM's re­quests" in re­la­tion to ar­chi­tec­tur­al draw­ings. Man­ning lat­er said PM could mean project man­ag­er. Per­sad-Bisses­sar had sent the in­for­ma­tion to act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert and Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard for a crim­i­nal probe. She had al­so re­quest­ed the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to probe the mat­ter. Mendes said the PM he re­ferred to in the let­ter was then prime min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning. Ram­lo­gan knocked the pace of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and the po­lice.

He said: "I find the pace of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is too slow. Al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion against a pub­lic of­fi­cial must be ex­pe­di­tious­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed, so the pub­lic can be vin­di­cat­ed. "But pub­lic con­fi­dence can be dam­aged if we al­low it to drag on end­less­ly."

Ram­lo­gan said the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion "is a pri­ma­ry of­fend­er" in this re­gard. "They have am­ple pow­ers and they have nev­er raised their voic­es about the lack of re­sources. "Yet still, they have nev­er in­formed the pub­lic about the state of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and when they could ex­pect clo­sure. "These are mat­ters that re­quire a change in at­ti­tude," the AG said.