?Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ch­agua­nas West Jack Warn­er has called on Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards to ex­er­cise his con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­ers to ex­tend the tenure of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd (Ude­cott) and the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor. He said the Pres­i­dent must al­so en­sure that the com­mis­sion main­tain its le­gal sta­tus in an­tic­i­pa­tion of re­cent court ac­tion against it. The tenure of the com­mis­sion is set to ex­pire next month. "I there­fore re­spect­ful­ly re­quest that you (the Pres­i­dent) con­sid­er the ex­er­cise of your pow­er in this re­gard to ex­tend the tenure of the com­mis­sion, to en­sure that its full man­date is ful­filled," Warn­er stat­ed yes­ter­day in a let­ter to the Pres­i­dent.

"Should you ac­qui­esce, the ob­jec­tives of the Par­lia­ment in es­tab­lish­ing this com­mis­sion and the pub­lic's in­ter­est in seek­ing jus­tice, ac­count­abil­i­ty and clo­sure would be achieved. "Should you ex­tend the tenure of the Uff com­mis­sion, it would en­sure that it con­tin­ues to have le­gal sta­tus pend­ing any and all court ac­tion and so give it suf­fi­cient time to com­plete its work." His let­ter fol­lowed con­cerns from the in­ter­im or­der of Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er in the le­gal pro­ceed­ing be­tween the Uff com­mis­sion and Ude­cott that stalled the find­ings of the com­mis­sion un­til Feb­ru­ary 2010.

Warn­er not­ed that when the High Court sat to hear sub­stan­tial ar­gu­ments from both sides, the com­mis­sion would not be able to func­tion be­cause its tenure would have ex­pired. "Bring­ing clo­sure to these is­sues is per­haps the most burn­ing is­sue fac­ing our na­tion," he said. "That is why it was es­tab­lished in the first place, and may I add at the ex­pense of tens of mil­lions of dol­lars from the pub­lic purse. "In the pub­lic's in­ter­est, in the in­ter­est of jus­tice and for the main­te­nance of law, or­der and good gov­er­nance, every pos­si­ble av­enue for achiev­ing the ob­jec­tive of clo­sure must be ex­plored. "The com­mis­sion would there­fore be de­prived of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­ceive and con­sid­er all avail­able ev­i­dence rel­a­tive to the mat­ter un­der en­quiry and its re­port would be fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed and in­com­plete since it would be lack­ing in the con­sid­er­a­tion of vi­tal is­sues. (KM)