Ken Ali

His diplo­mat­ic so­journ at St James Court as T&T's en­voy to Lon­don came in­to use Tues­day as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie used po­lit­i­cal sleight of hand on the thorny Uff Re­port. In a few deft moves, AG Je­re­mie sought, in the thick of the cur­rent elec­tion sea­son, to side­step the sledge­ham­mer im­pact of the damn­ing Uff study. At best, it may have won his fal­ter­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion some short-term breath­ing space. Je­re­mie cap­tured the head­lines and pub­lic imag­i­na­tion for the sum­ma­ry sack­ing of the re­main­ing Calder Hart co­horts on the Ude­cott board and by shunt­ing the rigid Uff rec­om­men­da­tions to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. The AG's po­lit­i­cal adroit­ness was a flash-in-the-pan cure-all, but the is­sues would con­tin­ue to fes­ter among politi­cians, in­dus­try crit­ics and con­sci­en­tious na­tion­als.

Ac­tu­al­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's fin­ger­prints were etched on Je­re­mie's move, the PM hav­ing sum­moned an ear­li­er Cab­i­net ses­sion to get con­sen­sus on cut­ting the Ude­cott board loose. It was a clas­sic Machi­avel­lian step, the Prime Min­is­ter quick­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ing he could no longer tote the much-crit­i­cised di­rec­tors as he in­evitably heads to a gen­er­al elec­tion show­down. As­sum­ing there is cul­pa­bil­i­ty, the dis­missal would not ex­tri­cate the board mem­bers from li­a­bil­i­ty, nor would it free Man­ning from the po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal charge of cud­dling the di­rec­tors.�

The PM would even­tu­al­ly have to own up to–maybe even pay the po­lit­i­cal price for–clutch­ing on­to Hart and his team in the midst of a swirling sea of in­crim­i­nat­ing ev­i­dence. As an ex­am­ple, the Uff team rec­om­mends an au­dit in­to "all of Ude­cott's se­nior staff and di­rec­tors in the pe­ri­od 2004 to 2009, as to their in­volve­ment in er­rors and omis­sion con­cern­ing the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um..." The Tarou­ba fa­cil­i­ty, of course, is a fi­nan­cial hell­hole that, at last count, has set back tax­pay­ers a tidy $885 mil­lion and is a mon­u­ment to squan­der­ma­nia.

More than that, there are sev­er­al cost­ly and crit­i­cal mat­ters–the $368 mil­lion CH De­vel­op­ment deal for the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs' tow­er, for ex­am­ple–for which di­rect re­spon­si­bil­i­ty falls at the foot­steps of the Hart board. Prof Uff wants a "full in­ves­ti­ga­tion by law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties," sug­gest­ing there may be crim­i­nal or civ­il charges to an­swer. The probe con­firmed what T&T had long known: That Cana­di­an Calder Hart was a big pap­py, an­swer­able on­ly to Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning.

It was a throw­back to Dr Ken Julien, the state sec­tor su­per­man in the fi­nal years of the era of Dr Er­ic Williams. In­deed, Hart "be­came the al­ter ego of Ude­cott," and "ex­er­cised con­sid­er­able in­flu­ence" over the cor­po­ra­tion, en­gen­der­ing "a con­sid­er­able amount of per­son­al loy­al­ty and an al­most com­plete ab­sence of dis­sent on any is­sue." Then, the re­port dead­panned: "From 2005 on­wards, there has been no ev­i­dence of any dis­agree­ment with or dis­sent from any ac­tion pro­posed or tak­en by Calder Hart."

In oth­er words, no one stood up to Hart, the cor­po­rate jefe who had the Prime Min­is­ter's ear and shared his priv­i­leged so­cial com­pa­ny. Not a damn dog barked, to re­vive a favourite Williams line. The spend­ing spree con­tin­ued–the Lara Sta­di­um's cost rose from $272 mil­lion–re­port­ed­ly with­out any op­po­si­tion or dis­agree­ment from fel­low di­rec­tors. In fact, Ude­cott, through Hart, "adopt­ed a con­fronta­tion­al at­ti­tude to those who have tak­en is­sue with its meth­ods and prac­tices..." Against that back­drop, is the dis­missal of the Ude­cott Board at this time good enough? Shouldn't the board have been zapped sev­er­al months ago, in the midst of the dis­turb­ing ev­i­dence be­fore the Uff probers? In­stead, PM Man­ning and side­kicks Colm Im­bert and Emi­ly Gaynor-Dick Forde fetched for myth­i­cal and es­o­teric rea­sons to cling on­to the di­rec­tors, rea­son­ing that the board mem­bers have not been con­vict­ed of any crimes.

Hart "is in­no­cent un­til proven guilty," Im­bert told Par­lia­ment last Oc­to­ber, adding: "I'm afraid I do not sub­scribe to the same im­por­tance to Ude­cott that ho­n­ourable mem­bers op­po­site do." Well, Hart and fel­low di­rec­tors are still not be­fore the courts. The rad­i­cal dif­fer­ence is that it is now po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­pe­di­ent to dump the di­rec­tors, Man­ning and Je­re­mie, no doubt, ex­pect­ing that their Pon­tius Pi­late ac­tion would grant them a high moral ground. In­deed, Dr Kei­th Row­ley in­sists he ad­vised Man­ning as far back as 2003 about Hart's lead­er­ship and fi­nan­cial man­ner, and yet the Ude­cott over­lord was per­mit­ted to run ram­pant. Row­ley has warned that the next elec­tion would re­volve around the tar­nished cor­po­ra­tion, in­sist­ing that its cor­rup­tion was worse than that un­cov­ered at the Pi­ar­co Air­port. "It is even more brazen; I can­not be­lieve they could have been so bold." Yet, in one of his many emo­tive de­fences, Man­ning as­sert­ed that "there are those who would re­sist" such a cor­po­ra­tion. He ar­gued: "There are those who would stand in the way of such a com­pa­ny achiev­ing its man­date and, there­fore, the weight of the of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter has to bear in the ex­e­cu­tion of the man­date of a com­pa­ny such as that."

Would Man­ning now con­cede that that pol­i­cy po­si­tion was wrong?

Would he ac­knowl­edge that sys­tems were sub­vert­ed and pro­ce­dures ig­nored as Hart be­came a vir­tu­al law un­to him­self? And, apart from the hope of pros­e­cu­tions, what else is there for cheat­ed and hood­winked tax­pay­ers?

It's dis­turb­ing that Row­ley's min­is­te­r­i­al suc­ces­sor, Dr Dick-Forde, nev­er in­ter­vened, even as the fi­nan­cial slime wors­ened. Dick-Forde opt­ed not to buck the sys­tem, choos­ing in­stead for trump-and-fol­low-suit with her pow­er-cen­tric boss. She shame­less­ly shed tears for Hart, kow­towed to the Ude­cott ap­pa­ra­tus, de­monised Row­ley, tar­get­ed Cleaver Heights, wran­gled with Mar­garet Chow and damned crit­ics of the cor­po­ra­tion's wild ex­cess­es. It's be­wil­der­ing that she re­mains in the Man­ning Cab­i­net, even as Je­re­mie af­firms a com-mit­ment to clean the Augean sta­bles and a de­ter­mi­na­tion to win back the pub­lic's trust and con­fi­dence. For his part, Row­ley has equat­ed the Ude­cott scan­dal with the O'Hal­lo­ran cor­rup­tion, but the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is more alarm­ing, even if on­ly be­cause it took place un­der the nose of an en­light­ened so­ci­ety which kept bleat­ing to an in­sen­si­tive ad­min­is­tra­tion. What are the op­tions now open to the swin­dled pop­u­lace? The forth­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion may pro­vide the on­ly re­al com­pro­mise rem­e­dy.