Richard Lord

For­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) Calder Hart says the "Patrick" to whom Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal re­ferred in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day was Patrick Cae­sar. Mooni­lal, the Hous­ing and En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter, had said a com­ment, which was writ­ten less than two weeks be­fore the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion by an un­named guest, said: "Love­ly place, Patrick. Thanks for the in­vite."

The guest had stayed in a $3 mil­lion vil­la in Bon Ac­cord bought by Ude­cott. Some Gov­ern­ment mem­bers queried whether the com­ment was di­rect­ed to then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. Mooni­lal said he did not know. He jok­ing­ly sug­gest­ed it could be leg­endary jour­nal­ist Patrick Chookolin­go or US film ac­tor Patrick Swayze.

Hart sent an e-mail re­sponse to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day. He said Cae­sar was the Nipdec project man­ag­er re­cruit­ed to man­age the joint Ude­cott/Nipdec op­er­a­tion in To­ba­go. Hart said once again it was im­por­tant to cor­rect the "false and mis­lead­ing ac­cu­sa­tions" made by Mooni­lal in Par­lia­ment.

Hart said: "As chair­man, I con­sult­ed with the boards of di­rec­tors and the ex­ec­u­tive teams on all de­ci­sions re­quired, the vil­la notwith­stand­ing." He al­so said a MOU ex­ist­ed be­tween Ude­cott and Nipdec "and there­fore no one act­ed alone in Ude­cott's de­ci­sion to ac­quire the vil­la, or in any oth­er mat­ter dur­ing my tenure at Ude­cott." He said the guest­book was for "of­fi­cial record and over­sight," and the vil­la was "used in the man­ner for which it was pur­chased, an of­fi­cial res­i­dence."

Hart said it was un­for­tu­nate Mooni­lal, a se­nior min­is­ter, could mis­rep­re­sent the sit­u­a­tion like he did. For­mer min­is­ter in the min­istry of fi­nance, Mar­i­ano Browne, in a com­ment on Face­book, al­so said it was "Patrick Cae­sar, the project man­ag­er in To­ba­go, not Patrick Man­ning."

And hous­ing, plan­ning and de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, Emi­ly Dick-Forde, said she was not the min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the vil­la when it was pur­chased in ear­ly No­vem­ber 2007. She said she served as min­is­ter from No­vem­ber 17, 2007 to May 24, 2010.

Mooni­lal said in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day the $3 mil­lion prop­er­ty was not pur­chased un­der Dr Kei­th Row­ley who served as min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Ude­cott up to the elec­tion in No­vem­ber of that year. Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Amery Browne was very crit­i­cal of Mooni­lal for rais­ing the mat­ter in a very "skil­ful and clever" man­ner in the Par­lia­ment.

Browne said Mooni­lal "un­der­stands the psy­che of the me­dia in this coun­try quite well." He said Mooni­lal al­ways at­tempt­ed to in­tro­duce in Par­lia­ment "a thin lev­el of scan­dal" when­ev­er he spoke. He said Mooni­lal's dis­clo­sure of the guest­book com­ment "love­ly, place, Patrick" was "very un­for­tu­nate." He said Mooni­lal had ac­com­plished his mis­sion be­cause the is­sue made it in­to the me­dia.