Gail Alexan­der

The pe­ti­tion that act­ing Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith re­ceived from the PNM did not bear any­one's sig­na­ture, ac­cord­ing to a let­ter from Hamel-Smith, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said yes­ter­day. Mooni­lal, speak­ing in yes­ter­day's bud­get de­bate, read from an Oc­to­ber 4 let­ter from the act­ing Pres­i­dent to the Prime Min­is­ter. The PNM had asked Hamel-Smith to get de­tails of the Clause 34 is­sue from the PM.

Speak­ing in the Low­er House, Mooni­lal not­ed that?Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley had led a march to Pres­i­dent's House against Sec­tion 34 on Sep­tem­ber 18 and the PNM lat­er said it had col­lect­ed 25,000 sig­na­tures in 48 hours for a pe­ti­tion to send to the Pres­i­dent.

The pe­ti­tion was to re­in­force the PNM's re­quest for pres­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion to get the Prime Min­is­ter to ex­plain the Sec­tion 34 is­sue and fire the Jus­tice Min­is­ter and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. But Mooni­lal, who claimed the PNM could not be trust­ed, cit­ed the let­ter from the act­ing Pres­i­dent, with whom Row­ley met on Sep­tem­ber 18.

Mooni­lal quot­ed Hamel-Smith's let­ter as say­ing:

"The pe­ti­tion re­ceived by me did not bear the sig­na­ture of any per­sons. "Dr Row­ley in­di­cat­ed he had col­lect­ed thou­sands of sig­na­tures in re­sponse to the pe­ti­tion and pro­duced to me a bun­dle with lists of sig­na­tures which were to ac­com­pa­ny the pe­ti­tion which I did not re­view.

"I sug­gest­ed rather that when he had prop­er­ly col­lat­ed all sig­na­tures, it might be ap­pro­pri­ate to de­liv­er same. Dr Row­ley un­der­took to do so." Mooni­lal told the House: "They said they de­liv­ered 25,000 sig­na­tures, in­clud­ing that of dis­tin­guished peo­ple...for­mer sen­ate pres­i­dent Michael Williams' sig­na­ture must be in a bag some­where in a cor­ner of Bal­isi­er House.

But if Mr Williams signed, it was in­tend­ed that this would go to the Pres­i­dent. "I use this to speak to the is­sue of trust. We must be hon­est with the pop­u­la­tion. Tell us if and when you do have a pe­ti­tion," Mooni­lal added. He said Row­ley, in his bud­get re­ply, had said the PNM would re­turn a project Mooni­lal dubbed the "Rack­et Rail."

Mooni­lal re­butted ear­li­er claims by Row­ley that the Hous­ing Min­is­ter and Cab­i­net over­paid for land in Cou­va and had over­rid­den the opin­ion of a pro­fes­sion­al val­u­a­tor. He said the own­er of the 50 acres of land at Eden Gar­dens had sought $200 mil­lion for the prop­er­ty, and the land had full in­fra­struc­ture, from street lights to roads and util­i­ty de­vel­op­ment.

He said Fi­nance Min­istry val­u­a­tors val­ued it at $180 mil­lion and Gov­ern­ment shaved off an­oth­er $5 mil­lion. He said the land was even­tu­al­ly bought, with all in­fra­struc­ture, for $175 mil­lion. Speak­er Wade Mark at the end of the ses­sion, cau­tioned all MPs against the use or ref­er­ence to the Pres­i­dent or act­ing Pres­i­dent.