Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj says he is not sur­prised by the find­ings of the Uff Com­mis­sion. Ma­haraj, who re­turned from Bar­ba­dos on Mon­day night, was speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view on the Morn­ing Panchy­at on Sangeet 106.1FM yes­ter­day. Based on the ex­tracts of the Uff re­port, pub­lished in the news­pa­pers, Ma­haraj said: "It was not sur­pris­ing to me what were the find­ings. I think it was quite clear all along that (Calder) Hart had too much of pow­er. "The pow­er was un­con­trolled...the Prime Min­is­ter al­lowed Hart to ex­er­cise ar­bi­trary pow­er and a lot of the projects need­ed foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tions but there were breach­es of all of the pro­ce­dures," he said.

"I think the Uff Com­mis­sion has vin­di­cat­ed the pub­lic in their con­cerns about Ude­cott, about Mr Calder Hart and the board of Ude­cott." Ma­haraj said since 2008, when the mat­ter about the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er was dis­closed, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had a du­ty to do what was right and fire the Ude­cott board and take the nec­es­sary steps against Hart. How­ev­er, he said Hart was praised and more con­tracts were award­ed. Asked if he felt con­fi­dent about the rec­om­men­da­tions be­ing im­ple­ment­ed, Ma­haraj said he re­mained hope­ful that "se­ri­ous steps" would be tak­en to im­ple­ment them ,whether it was by the ex­ist­ing gov­ern­ment or a new gov­ern­ment. "I have no doubt there will be a gen­er­al elec­tion in the month of May," he said.

Al­so speak­ing about the is­sue of the mod­el of gov­er­nance, Ma­haraj said there should be more in­no­v­a­tive ways for peo­ple of a coun­try to re­move a gov­ern­ment. "I think that this is the worst in the his­to­ry of the PNM...I think it is even worse than the O'Hal­lo­ran scan­dal," he said. "I think the time has come in Trinidad and To­ba­go for there to be a dif­fer­ent kind of rules for democ­ra­cy. "Here you have a Gov­ern­ment that can be in of­fice for five years, can do what­ev­er it wants and un­less a gen­er­al elec­tion is called and the peo­ple de­cide to move it...the Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue in of­fice." He said there should be pow­ers of re­call for a gov­ern­ment.