Yvonne Ba­boolal

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning yes­ter­day called on his suc­ces­sor Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to lay in Par­lia­ment all rel­e­vant state ap­provals for the con­struc­tion for her Phillip­ine house which he de­scribed as "this ex­tra­or­di­nary large build­ing and com­pound." Man­ning wants Per­sad-Bisses­sar to lay in Par­lia­ment out­line ap­proval, fi­nal ap­proval and ap­proved build­ing plans from Town and Coun­try Plan­ning, a copy of the cer­ti­fied deed of own­er­ship of the prop­er­ty, as well as per­mis­sion to build from the rel­e­vant lo­cal gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ty, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty. "The Mem­ber for Siparia has demon­strat­ed readi­ness to try and clear the air," Man­ning, who is in his 40th year of par­lia­men­tary ser­vice, stat­ed in the re­lease yes­ter­day. "In this same spir­it of co-op­er­a­tion, I would there­fore ex­pect her to ac­cede to my re­quest and will­ing­ly lay (the above) in the Par­lia­ment for the scruti­ny of the na­tion."

He said he found "most un­con­vinc­ing," the re­sponse of Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the cost so far of the build­ing. "In­deed, just by look­ing at the pic­tures ap­pear­ing in to­day's news­pa­pers, it would take a sim­ple­ton to be­lieve, as the Prime Min­is­ter claims, that this pala­tial look­ing res­i­dence has so far cost on­ly $3 mil­lion," Man­ning said. "We have a very dis­cern­ing pop­u­la­tion in T&T and they will not be­lieve claims and state­ments that patent­ly con­tra­dict the ev­i­dence be­fore their eyes. "Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as the na­tion's leader, now has an in­escapable re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to com­plete­ly clear the air on this is­sue, if trust in her high of­fice is to be main­tained. "In­tegri­ty, trans­paren­cy and 'serv­ing the peo­ple' re­quire no less. I ex­pect there­fore that the me­dia would be giv­en a com­pre­hen­sive tour of this fa­cil­i­ty so that the coun­try could have an idea of the re­gal splen­dour at­tained by this Prime Min­is­ter, who, with such con­vinc­ing hu­mil­i­ty, nev­er ceas­es to re­mind us of her ut­ter­ly hum­ble ori­gins."

Man­ning said he thanks the Prime Min­is­ter for of­fer­ing to sell him the man­sion for $30 mil­lion, as re­port­ed in yes­ter­day's Sun­day Guardian.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I can't ac­cept," he said. "First­ly, in my pri­vate af­fairs, I have nev­er come any­where near know­ing that amount of dough.

"I start­ed in a hum­ble way and have re­turned as you can see, af­ter 39 years of pub­lic ser­vice, to the kind of mod­est en­vi­ron­ment from which I orig­i­nat­ed. "The fact is I nev­er saw pub­lic of­fice as a means for self en­rich­ment, il­le­gal or oth­er­wise. "I nev­er ben­e­fit­ed from drug mon­ey, for ex­am­ple." Sug­gest­ing that if she want­ed to dis­pose of her prop­er­ty, the State could ac­quire it as a home for va­grants. "I am com­fort­ed by the fact that be­fore any state ac­qui­si­tion of your res­i­dence, of­fi­cial­dom will en­sure that this prop­er­ty is not taint­ed in any oth­er way."