Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath has dis­missed Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley's claims that he act­ed de­ci­sive­ly on al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment in the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott). Bharath made the state­ment in a press re­lease yes­ter­day evening in re­sponse to com­ments made by Row­ley in a re­cent news­pa­per re­port.Row­ley's com­ments fo­cused on al­le­ga­tions from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar which were made fol­low­ing his speech which dealt with his role in Ude­cott fi­as­co, at a Ro­tary Club lun­cheon at Good­will In­dus­tries in Port-of-Spain on Tues­day."When I was min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Ude­cott, I act­ed de­ci­sive­ly. The Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar can­not show me that in her Gov­ern­ment," Row­ley was quot­ed as say­ing.

In his re­sponse, yes­ter­day, Bharath sought to take Row­ley to task on his claim of "de­ci­sive­ness" in­stead say­ing he act­ed "spite­ful­ly"."Dr Row­ley can­not ex­pect to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly with such a disin­gen­u­ous state­ment. It can­not take five years to be de­ci­sive on one very clear and ob­vi­ous is­sue. He is on record as say­ing that al­though he found mas­sive cor­rup­tion in 2003, he re­mained in Cab­i­net, cam­paigned for the PNM in 2007 and it was on­ly in 2008 af­ter he was fired from the Cab­i­net that he spoke about ram­pant cor­rup­tion," Bharath said.He al­so sought to de­fend Per­sad-Bisses­sar's com­ments on the is­sue."The Prime Min­is­ter made it very clear that the Op­po­si­tion leader played a key role in the col­lapse of the PNM Ad­min­is­tra­tion be­cause of his si­lence and per­mis­sive­ness in the face of ram­pant cor­rup­tion and be­cause of his ar­ro­gance and re­fusal to lis­ten and un­der­stand the con­cerns of cit­i­zens," Bharath said.

Bharath agreed with the Prime Min­is­ter's com­ments where she ac­cused Row­ley of turn­ing the is­sue in­to a po­lit­i­cal the­atre when he spoke in Par­lia­ment in 2009 and at­tempt­ed to be­rate his leader and then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning."There was nev­er a na­tion­al in­ter­est, it was al­ways about Dr Row­ley's in­ter­est and for the Op­po­si­tion leader to now try to wig­gle out of guilt be­cause he be­lieves the na­tion has for­got­ten is an in­dict­ment on his al­ready poor lead­er­ship," Bharath said.Al­leg­ing that Row­ley's state­ment should be scru­ti­nised by the pub­lic, Bharath said: "These are facts and it is a his­to­ry that can­not be re-writ­ten and his brazen at­tempt to do so makes it clear that Dr Kei­th Row­ley sim­ply can­not be trust­ed, and his word can­not be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly."