Clevon Raphael

?To say I am deeply dis­ap­point­ed over the re­fusal of board mem­bers of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T to fol­low their for­mer chair­man, Calder Hart, and re­sign is the un­der­state­ment of 2010.

It is with a pro­found sense of an­guish and dis­be­lief that in the face of all that has tran­spired with this state-owned spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny and par­tic­u­lar­ly Hart, up to Mon­day three of the five-mem­ber team had told the me­dia they saw no rea­son to re­sign. One can be char­i­ta­ble and ex­cuse their in­ex­plic­a­ble stance on the quite cor­rect ground that they per­son­al­ly did noth­ing wrong, and there­fore it is un­fair to ask them to vol­un­tary quit their po­si­tions.

How­ev­er, their re­luc­tance to go in peace can al­so be in­ter­pret­ed as one in which these ho­n­ourable gen­tle­men are com­plete­ly mis­read­ing the mood of the pop­u­la­tion, which is one of ex­treme anger over the sor­ry mess that T&T has been en­gulfed over the past few years. And that is the mak­ing of politi­cians and oth­ers en­trust­ed with run­ning vi­tal sec­tors of the coun­try. We have been thrown in­to a tail­spin with so many neg­a­tive is­sues, each play­ing out at the same time and which have left us won­der­ing when and how it would all end. I don't know at­tor­ney An­tho­ny Cher­ry and Wen­dell Dot­tin, Ude­cott board mem­bers, but I have a fair idea of the kind of per­son busi­ness mag­nate Dr Kr­ish­na Ba­hadoors­ingh is. I have grown to re­spect him as a forth­right, prin­ci­pled gen­tle­man ever since his stint as an In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor some years ago. At the time of writ­ing Ba­hadoors­ingh, a deputy chair­man of Ude­cott, was re­port­ed­ly out of the coun­try and ex­pect­ed to re­turn home on Mon­day.

This would have giv­en him enough time to as­sess his tenure at Ude­cott and ar­rive at a de­ci­sion, one which I am sure would be in keep­ing with his high prin­ci­ples and moral cor­rect­ness. I don't think he is one who would stub­born­ly and for self­ish rea­sons hold on to an of­fice which at this time is be­ing looked at with askance by the peo­ple. Be­ing the well cul­tured in­di­vid­ual–this is not to say the oth­ers are not, but as I said I don't know about them–he would not want to be seen as fly­ing in the face of the peo­ple who, thank God, are fi­nal­ly say­ing those en­trust­ed with high pub­lic of­fice would no longer be al­lowed to do with us what they damn well please. So I would ex­pect that by this time at least Dr Ba­hadoors­ingh would have done the de­cent thing. Then there is the fifth mem­ber, Michael An­nisette, pres­i­dent of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union; pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre, and an In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor.

In­stead of con­tin­u­ing his stri­dent de­fence of Hart (up to Mon­day he was there bat­ting for him), as he has been do­ing since day one, An­nisette should set the ex­am­ple and be the first to send in his res­ig­na­tion. Af­ter all, he was up and down the place in the me­dia scold­ing any­body who dared crit­i­cise, even in the slight­est man­ner, his beloved Hart and Ude­cott. On re­flec­tion, Anisette, out of a sense of mis­placed loy­al­ty, and as an act of con­tri­tion for se­vere­ly chastis­ing those who quite prop­er­ly went af­ter Hart, must re­sign and leave with some de­gree of dig­ni­ty. But the main char­ac­ter in this sor­row­ful epic, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, has a ma­jor role to play in this un­fold­ing dra­ma. Sim­ply put, if those fel­lows still refuse to chuck in the job, he has the moral and po­lit­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to thank them for their ser­vice and send them pack­ing. In 1993, Man­ning set the prece­dent for deal­ing with erring state bod­ies when he asked the en­tire board of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty to re­sign over un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the award­ing of a con­tract to Pe­ga­sus for the re­fur­bish­ing of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Un­like this cur­rent sce­nario, there was ab­solute­ly no cred­i­ble jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in the dis­missal of the board but Man­ning felt he was do­ing the right thing in ask­ing its mem­bers to go. Man­ning fol­lowed up his Pi­ar­co ac­tion when the po­lice charged two of his Cab­i­net min­is­ters over cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions. One of them, Er­ic Williams, who no doubt saw his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer com­ing to a screech­ing halt, was, thank God, freed by the court. The oth­er, Franklin Khan is still be­fore the court. So Man­ning can­not now be seen as back-ped­alling on his ze­ro tol­er­ance for per­ceived mis­con­duct in pub­lic of­fice, even though no one is ac­cus­ing or has ac­cused the re­main­ing Ude­cott board mem­bers of such. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with fir­ing them, Man­ning must have the po­lice con­duct a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to most, if not all, Ude­cott projects be­cause, un­like the Pi­ar­co in­stance, bil­lions of dol­lars are at stake here. And when the fi­nal chap­ter is writ­ten on this whole sor­did saga, Man­ning him­self has to ac­count to the peo­ple for his whole­heart­ed sup­port of Hart, when oth­ers were send­ing clear sig­nals to him that all was not well with Ude­cott.

NEXT WEEK: Bas­deo Pan­day –T&T's pub­lic en­e­my No 1