Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

?The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has said that Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning soiled his of­fice and brought it in­to dis­re­pute af­ter the State-owned Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd (Ude­cott) was al­lowed to ob­struct the pub­li­ca­tion of a re­port from the John Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry that would tack­le al­le­ga­tions of bil­lions of dol­lars in cor­rup­tion at Ude­cott. "Is Mr Calder Hart (Ude­cott's chair­man) hold­ing se­crets for the Prime Min­is­ter of this coun­try? This is a ques­tion that the Prime Min­is­ter needs to an­swer," said Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor and UNC deputy po­lit­i­cal leader, Wade Mark.

"How come the Prime Min­is­ter as the head of the Cab­i­net could di­rect the line min­is­ters of both PTSC (the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion) and TSTT (Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed) to in­struct their man­age­ment to with­draw their ap­pli­ca­tions at the In­dus­tri­al Court to de­cer­ti­fy two trade unions?" he said. "And that was done with­in a few hours, and yet still this Prime Min­is­ter can­not take a de­ci­sion to dis­miss the en­tire board at Ude­cott so that that fi­as­co that is tak­ing right now at the lev­el of the court could be avoid­ed." Mark was speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion on Charles Street in Port of Spain.

He de­scribed the in­quiry in­to Ude­cott's op­er­a­tion as "the most se­ri­ous and scan­dalous de­vel­op­ment" in Trinidad and To­ba­go. "The high priest in­volved in this old mas is the Prime Min­is­ter and the Prime Min­is­ter of this coun­try has to ac­count to the pop­u­la­tion why he has not in­ter­vened to bring some sense of bal­ance, ra­tio­nal­i­ty and rea­son to this process. Why is the Prime Min­is­ter so silent?" he asked. "What the Prime Min­is­ter is pre­sid­ing over is a cor­rupt sit­u­a­tion and it is most un­ac­cept­able, it is in­de­fen­si­ble and it is in­ex­cus­able and the Prime Min­is­ter must ac­count to the peo­ple for his deaf­en­ing si­lence on this whole, ug­ly sce­nario."

Mark was joined by the UNC's deputy chair­man and the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for St Au­gus­tine Vas­ant Bharath, who made sev­er­al de­mands that in­clud­ed a call for Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to fire the en­tire board of Ude­cott.

"He (the Prime Min­is­ter) has lost the moral au­thor­i­ty to gov­ern and has vi­o­lat­ed the moral and spir­i­tu­al laws up­on which he was foist­ed in­to of­fice," Bharath said. "He must re­sign now and his Gov­ern­ment must seek a new man­date from the peo­ple. (KM)