Ken Ali

Tabaquite MP, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, is de­scrib­ing as "a big con­spir­a­cy," the lat­est twist in the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) af­fair. Seething with rage, the for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al has damned it as "worse than Wa­ter­gate. It's the worst that I've ever seen," he added. "This thing is ex­treme­ly baf­fling," said Ma­haraj, in analysing last Fri­day's court rul­ing that puts the re­veal­ing Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to cold stor­age.

And Ma­haraj queried why the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion was con­tin­u­ing to give hefty con­struc­tion con­tracts to the state-owned en­ti­ty, in spite of sworn tes­ti­monies of al­leged breach­es of ten­der­ing pro­ce­dures. He won­dered aloud why the Calder Hart-head­ed board of di­rec­tors was be­ing kept in place, in the face of the stag­ger­ing claims be­fore the Uff probers. "The Prime Min­is­ter must fire the board," said Ma­haraj, who served as AG for five years. "It's not too late. Gov­ern­ment has 100 per cent own­er­ship of Ude­cott, and has the pow­er to fire the board, ap­point a new board, and di­rect the pol­i­cy the way it wants it."

He point­ed to the Cab­i­net di­rec­tive to the boards of Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) to re­scind planned de­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion moves against sit­ting trade unions. "How come, there­fore, the Gov­ern­ment couldn't in­struct Ude­cott, a whol­ly-owned state en­ter­prise, to with­draw its ac­tion against the com­mis­sion of en­quiry? "What bias is Ude­cott claim­ing?

"How could the Gov­ern­ment seek to le­galise the com­mis­sion, af­ter non-pub­li­ca­tion in the Gazette, and then not give a pol­i­cy di­rec­tive on the le­gal ac­tion?"

The ex-AG then pon­dered that the Gov­ern­ment sim­ply does not want the com­mis­sion's work to pro­ceed. Ude­cott chal­lenged the com­mis­sion in court, even af­ter two promi­nent gov­ern­ment min­is­ters had come down against such a move. As late as last Thurs­day night, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie re­it­er­at­ed an as­ser­tion that he was in favour of the con­tin­u­a­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Je­re­mie told the Sen­ate: "My un­der­stand­ing is that what­ev­er hap­pens in court to­mor­row, Ude­cott will not seek to stay the pro­ceed­ings."

Ear­li­er, Con­rad Enill, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and chair­man of the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment, had sound­ed be­wil­dered over the use of tax­pay­ers' funds to chal­lenge the com­mis­sion. For his part, Ma­haraj in­sists that the Gov­ern­ment "must stop giv­ing work" to Ude­cott while the probe re­mained open-end­ed. Dr Kei­th Row­ley, sacked for­mer line min­is­ter of Ude­cott, has spo­ken of "se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions" as a re­sult of the court's de­ci­sion.

Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean Ar­mour or­dered on Fri­day that the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry hold its hand on its re­port un­til Feb­ru­ary. It was a tem­po­rary or­der that re­sult­ed from an "am­i­ca­ble agree­ment" among stake­hold­ers. Ude­cott had gone to court to chal­lenge the com­mis­sion, on the grounds of al­leged bias.