Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

?In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor and di­rec­tor of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) Michael An­nisette has de­nounced state­ments that Ude­cott was squan­der­ing and abus­ing state funds in le­gal pro­ceed­ings. He said, "Do not mis­rep­re­sent the facts. Do not make the pub­lic be­lieve that we are mis­us­ing pub­lic mon­ey. It (is) the law that we are fol­low­ing.

"In one breath, you (are) say­ing that we are a run­away horse; we (are) not fol­low­ing the law and when we are fol­low­ing the law, we (are) mis­treat­ing pub­lic mon­ey." He was con­tribut­ing on Thurs­day night in the de­bate on leg­is­la­tion in the Sen­ate to val­i­date and se­cure the com­mis­sion and its work. An­nisette dis­played signs of out­rage af­ter an­oth­er In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, Dana See­ta­hal, in­quired in crosstalk about who would be the per­son pay­ing the ex­pens­es chalked up by Ude­cott's ju­di­cial re­view case against the com­mis­sion. �

"That is not the is­sue and I (am) glad that you (have) come and I will an­swer you be­cause you...Ude­cott has been set up un­der the Com­pa­nies Or­di­nance, all right, and there­fore in that con­text we fall un­der the rules and reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing that and (it) is the board mem­bers that are ex­posed, not the min­is­ter," he said. "If they (are) go­ing and charge any­body, they (are) not go­ing to charge the Min­is­ter , they are go­ing to charge Michael An­nisette, all right, and in those kinds of cir­cum­stances un­der those laws, it is the com­pa­ny that has to pay the le­gal fees."

An­nisette said ju­di­cial re­view was not au­to­mat­ic and that an ap­pli­ca­tion had to be filed and it was the dis­cre­tion of the judge to de­ter­mine its ba­sis. "So it is not au­to­mat­ic and at the end­ing of the day, the court is go­ing to de­ter­mine whether you are right or wrong," he said. "How can oth­er peo­ple have rights and when you ex­er­cise a right, it is wrong, it is im­moral, it is un­eth­i­cal and you should re­sign...I mean it is so lu­di­crous, it is so un­fair."