Richard Lord

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor and a di­rec­tor of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott), Michael An­nisette says he will speak in de­fence of the com­pa­ny in to­day's de­bate on a bill to val­i­date the work thus far com­plet­ed by the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor.

An­nisette claimed that based on what has hap­pened to date, it is clear that "there was a car­tel or group of in­di­vid­u­als out there who are de­ter­mined to de­stroy Ude­cott. They in­flu­ence the me­dia to show bias in its re­port­ing against Ude­cott. There is on­ly one-sided re­port­ing in the me­dia." He con­tends there is no one in the coun­try who could prove him wrong in this mat­ter. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie is ex­pect­ed to ta­ble the bill. The pro­posed leg­is­la­tion, which is ex­pect­ed to get the sup­port of the Op­po­si­tion UNC, seeks to en­sure that the work of the com­mis­sion is pro­tect­ed and can be re­sumed. The com­mis­sion was sus­pend­ed on Sep­tem­ber 7 be­cause of the fail­ure of the Gov­ern­ment to meet a le­gal re­quire­ment to pub­lish a no­tice about it in the Gazette.

An­nisette said he gave care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion to his be­ing in­volved in the de­bate and has agreed "not to bow to pres­sure from oth­er peo­ple." He con­firmed that Gov­ern­ment MP and sacked trade min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, ra­dio talk-show hosts Dale Enoch and Tony Lee of I-95.5 FM and oth­ers have been crit­i­cal of him and have in­di­rect­ly sug­gest­ed that he should not par­tic­i­pate be­cause of an al­leged con­flict of in­ter­ests. But An­nisette in­sists there is no con­flict of in­ter­est. He said he did not seek le­gal ad­vice on whether he should con­tribute to the de­bate. He claims to have done his own re­search and con­sid­ered sev­er­al is­sues be­fore de­cid­ing that he should speak. He said he asked him­self five ques­tions:

Do I have any pe­cu­niary in­ter­est in the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry

Is the com­po­si­tion of the Ude­cott Board the sub­ject of the in­quiry

Do I have shares in Ude­cott or was I of­fered con­tracts or em­ploy­ment in a pro­fes­sion­al ca­pac­i­ty

Will I or my fam­i­ly ben­e­fit di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly from my par­tic­i­pa­tion in the de­bate

Have I ap­peared be­fore the com­mis­sion to give ev­i­dence or make al­le­ga­tions against any par­ty in­volved in it

To all those ques­tions, An­nisette said the an­swer was a re­sound­ing no.

The out­spo­ken Ude­cott di­rec­tor said in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day that Ude­cott has "a le­gal and con­sti­tu­tion­al right to seek ju­di­cial re­view if it felt that it was not be­ing fair­ly treat­ed un­der the law.