Gail Alexan­der

The In­vaders Bay de­vel­op­ment plan pre­dates the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment, and the cur­rent project is be­ing op­posed by peo­ple who them­selves have an in­ter­est in it, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie said yes­ter­day.He list­ed a 2007 re­quest for pro­pos­als for the de­vel­op­ment, a 2007 let­ter from Prof Ken Julien to the Plan­ning Min­istry mak­ing sug­ges­tions on the is­sue and a March 2010 PNM Cab­i­net note con­cern­ing in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ers, which he said con­firmed that clients were lin­ing up for it in front of the PNM Gov­ern­ment.

"The his­to­ry of In­vaders Bay as a project pre­dates the PP Gov­ern­ment and in­volves a num­ber of in­ter­est­ed–and some may say self-in­ter­est­ed–par­ties. The on­ly rea­son it has be­come so con­tro­ver­sial in our time is be­cause there were deals al­ready in mo­tion be­fore we came; there was a line-up of peo­ple for the project," Tewarie said in Par­lia­ment.

He said there were in­ter­ests en­gaged in ac­tive pur­suit and en­gage­ment of the then min­is­ter, who brought it to the for­mer Cab­i­net's at­ten­tion, and even a let­ter to the for­mer prime min­is­ter from a bank which want­ed to fi­nance a com­pa­ny on the project.One of the com­pa­nies which the PNM cab­i­net was told had an in­ter­est in the project was Colum­bus Tow­ers Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment (CT­PD) Co Ltd, a di­vi­sion of the M Fal­con group, he not­ed.

Tewarie not­ed an Au­gust 12, 2007, re­quest for pro­pos­als (de­sign and build). It said the then gov­ern­ment's Plan­ning Min­istry was seek­ing in­ter­est for the de­vel­op­ment of In­vaders Bay and de­tailed what was be­ing sought. It pro­ject­ed the ac­tiv­i­ty would be fi­nalised with­in two months of the RFP's sub­mis­sion.

Tewarie read a 2007 let­ter from Julien on a Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T let­ter­head, sent to the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and sug­gest­ing the min­istry should do a pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise and take oth­er spe­cif­ic steps. Julien's let­ter sug­gest­ed the "two en­ve­lope" process should be used, with tech­ni­cal in­for­ma­tion in one en­ve­lope and fi­nan­cial da­ta in an­oth­er.

A March 29, 2010, PNM Gov­ern­ment Cab­i­net note showed Cab­i­net was asked to ac­cept the Plan­ning Min­istry's rec­om­men­da­tion and ac­cept an out­lined plan. It al­so said Cab­i­net should note that in the light of the area's po­ten­tial for de­vel­op­ment, sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ers had ex­pressed in­ter­est in es­tab­lish­ing com­mer­cial en­ter­pris­es there.

The most re­cent ex­pres­sion then came from the CT­PD com­pa­ny. Tewarie al­so read a let­ter from a bank af­fil­i­at­ed to the Fal­con group to the for­mer prime min­is­ter, not­ing he want­ed to an­nounce the project at the 2009 Com­mon­wealth meet­ing in T&T and per­mit­ting him to say ini­tial talks had been held with the bank on the project.On this week's court judg­ment in favour of the JCC on the project, Tewarie said there was no is­sue of fail­ing to dis­close, seek­ing to pre­vent dis­clo­sure or fear of dis­clos­ing.

The JCC suc­cess­ful­ly took the min­istry to court to force it to hand over the le­gal ad­vice that said it was not oblig­ed to re­veal in­for­ma­tion on the project."The on­ly is­sue we're con­test­ing is whether the ad­vice of an at­tor­ney to client, gen­er­al­ly re­gard­ed as priv­i­leged in­for­ma­tion, is sub­ject to the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, or whether, since it is a priv­i­leged ex­change of in­for­ma­tion be­tween at­tor­ney and client, it is ex­empt from the act.

"The is­sue Gov­ern­ment is con­test­ing is be­cause of the view that if at­tor­ney/client priv­i­lege were not ho­n­oured by the court, it would cre­ate a prece­dent that would have far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions."Say­ing the project met all nec­es­sary cri­te­ria and could with­stand scruti­ny, he added lawyers were study­ing the court's judg­ment and the min­istry would de­cide whether to ap­peal.Tewarie was at­tacked by PNM MPs, who ac­cused him of try­ing gov­ern­ment's court case in the Par­lia­ment.

The PNM's at­tacks were so fe­ro­cious that Deputy Speak­er Nela Khan had to shout for or­der amid the "mob" at­mos­phere, par­tic­u­lar­ly when PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley in­sist­ed on protest­ing.