Richard Lord

?Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Bas­deo Pan­day said the po­lice should in­ves­ti­gate al­le­ga­tions of fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety at the Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­istry.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Pan­day said the probe should be car­ried out af­ter Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Gary Hunt ad­mit­ted to wrong­do­ing in the erec­tion of a $2 mil­lion flag at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Port-of-Spain. Hunt in an ad­dress to the na­tion on Sun­day night ad­mit­ted to er­rors in the ex­e­cu­tion of the project, which was in­tend­ed to en­cour­age na­tion­al pride. He stopped short of apol­o­gis­ing for the project but said it would nev­er hap­pen again.

Pan­day said Hunt should now tell the na­tion what ex­act­ly was "the mis­step" made in the erec­tion of the flag. There has been a pub­lic out­cry against the cost­ly project. Hunt in­di­cat­ed last year when the mat­ter was raised at a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence that the flag was to en­cour­age na­tion­al pride. Pan­day, in re­sponse to ques­tions on Hunt's state­ment at the week­end, said he must now ex­plain whether the prob­lem was erect­ing the flag or the cost of it. Pan­day said Hunt's state­ment was "in­nocu­ous" paint­ed Hunt as some­one seek­ing sym­pa­thy. The Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) spokesman for sports and so­cial de­vel­op­ment, Manohar Ram­saran, said yes­ter­day Hunt should re­sign over the mat­ter and should be made ac­count­able for it.