The Op­po­si­tion PNM had to "beat" the Gov­ern­ment in­to yield­ing up an­swers on the Tu­na­puna house and the NP con­tract, PNM sen­a­tor Faris Al Rawi said yes­ter­day.Speak­ing in the Sen­ate on a re­port con­cern­ing pro­cure­ment, Al Rawi said it was con­spic­u­ous that Leader of House Busi­ness Roodal Mooni­lal-who sits next to the Prime Min­is­ter in the House-had come to the Sen­ate to an­swer a ques­tion on the Tu­na­puna house.Al Rawi said there had been com­men­tary re­cent­ly about the pur­port­ed award of the con­tract to some­one "who was stat­ed a short while ago to be a close ac­quain­tance of the Prime Min­is­ter."Al Rawi not­ed the ques­tion on the Tu­na­puna house had been asked of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy. The lat­ter was over­seas.Al Rawi not­ed that Min­is­ter in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sub­has Pan­day-who was present-did not de­liv­er the re­ply.

He said the ques­tion had been asked many times."It was on­ly af­ter drilling and beat­ing by PNM sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds the is­sue was even­tu­al­ly an­swered by a high- rank­ing of­fi­cial such as the Leader of House Gov­ern­ment busi­ness," Al Rawi said."I'm grate­ful he (Mooni­lal) an­swered on the re­al is­sue for which we had to beat him for." He said the is­sue was re­al­ly whether some­one with as lit­tle track record as al­leged in the con­tract is­sue should be the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of a con­tract.

"I don't sup­port the fact that every­one who knows a per­son in high pow­er should be au­to­mat­i­caly ex­clud­ed from work, but we must al­low for prop­er pro­ce­dures to ap­ply," Al Rawi said.He added that Gov­ern­ment had no pol­i­cy on pub­lic pro­cure­ment.Al Rawi said the Gov­ern­ment could not preach fair­ness and trans­paren­cy and ex­clude peo­ple.He com­pli­ment­ed CAL chair­man George Nicholas for re­cus­ing him­self from a re­cent process, but said peo­ple could not be ex­clud­ed for be­ing per­ceived as PNM, for in­stance. (GA)