To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?On Tues­day, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Ude­cott Chair­man Calder Hart stunned the na­tion when they de­clined to cross-ex­am­ine Carl Khan on his tes­ti­mo­ny that Mr Hart's wife, Sher­rine, was close­ly re­lat­ed to two Malaysians with links to Sun­way, a com­pa­ny from that coun­try.

The de­ci­sion not to cross-ex­am­ine Mr Khan was sur­pris­ing giv­en the fact that Sher­rine Hart was once mar­ried to him and Sun­way was the re­cip­i­ent of a large con­tract to con­struct a pub­lic build­ing in down­town Port-of-Spain–even though it was far from be­ing the low­est bid­der. Late Tues­day, Ude­cott is­sued a state­ment ex­plain­ing that the rea­son for not cross-ex­am­in­ing Mr Khan "was that any fur­ther ex­am­i­na­tion of Khan was un­like­ly to pro­duce any­thing of ev­i­den­tial val­ue and would on­ly serve to fu­el ir­rel­e­vant and scan­dalous spec­u­la­tion in­to the per­son­al af­fairs of the Hart fam­i­ly." Of course, there are in­ter­pre­ta­tions oth­er than those first made by Mr Hart's at­tor­ney, SC Frank Solomon, in court on Tues­day. One in­ter­pre­ta­tion is that Mr Hart, Ude­cott and the at­tor­neys de­cid­ed that Mr Khan's tes­ti­mo­ny could not be shak­en un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion; that cross-ex­am­i­na­tion would have in­evitably lead to Mrs Hart be­ing re­quired to take the stand; that Mr Khan un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion would "buss plen­ty more mark."

Al­so, it could be that the at­tor­neys were hop­ing that the pop­u­la­tion and the Uff Com­mis­sion would con­clude that the tes­ti­mo­ny of Mr Khan was un­re­li­able as it did not go through the fire of cross-ex­am­i­na­tion. In the cir­cum­stances the hope would have been for Mr Khan's tes­ti­mo­ny to be giv­en a low­er weight by the com­mis­sion and the pop­u­la­tion. The re­al­i­ty is that Mr Khan, who was mar­ried to Sher­rine Hart for three year, gave sworn tes­ti­mo­ny to the com­mis­sion about mat­ters very per­ti­nent to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. That he was not chal­lenged by se­nior at­tor­neys look­ing af­ter the in­ter­est of their clients is not his fault. As to how the law in­ter­prets such un­chal­lenged state­ments, whether they are au­to­mat­i­cal­ly tak­en as truth or whether they can be dis­cred­it­ed, is, in the first in­stance, for Prof John Uff and his com­mis­sion to de­cide. How­ev­er, most as­sured­ly, the pop­u­la­tion will al­so have its say on the mer­its or de­mer­its of the Hart ap­proach.�

At an­oth­er lev­el, it is clear, even be­fore the com­mis­sion sub­mits its re­port, that the Gov­ern­ment has a spe­cial in­ter­est and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to as­cer­tain on be­half of the pop­u­la­tion whether or not the al­le­ga­tions made by Mr Khan have any sub­stance to them. We cer­tain­ly agree with Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning that the Gov­ern­ment can­not join what he calls "the lynch mob" against Chair­man Hart and the board and man­age­ment of Ude­cott. How­ev­er, as keep­er of the na­tion­al purse, the Gov­ern­ment cer­tain­ly is man­dat­ed by the cir­cum­stances to find out if in­deed there was and con­tin­ues to be this fa­mil­ial link be­tween Mr Hart's wife and se­nior ex­ec­u­tives of the Malaysian com­pa­ny.�It is ab­solute­ly in­suf­fi­cient for the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T to dis­miss the con­tentions of the for­mer hus­band of Mrs Hart with the claim that it was the re­sponse of a "jilt­ed lover." A Prime Min­is­ter and his Gov­ern­ment can­not op­er­ate on that ba­sis.

If the Prime Min­is­ter is to ad­e­quate­ly car­ry out his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to guard the pub­lic purse as avid­ly as he would his own, the facts be­hind the con­tentions and counter-con­tentions must be found out. If the Gov­ern­ment were tru­ly in­ter­est­ed in get­ting to the truth of this Sun­way con­tract, it would im­me­di­ate­ly con­tract not­ed foren­sic ac­coun­tant Bob Lindquist to in­ves­ti­gate whether there are any fa­mil­ial links be­tween Sher­rine Hart and the two Malaysians. Such an in­ves­ti­ga­tion would clear up this is­sue once and for all. If the al­le­ga­tion turns out not to be true, the cloud of un­cer­tain­ty which now dark­ens the Hart fam­i­ly will quick­ly be blown away and Carl Khan's cred­i­bil­i­ty dam­aged. If the al­le­ga­tion of fa­mil­ial ties is proven, Mr Hart would have some ques­tions to an­swer about the tes­ti­mo­ny which he swore, with his hand placed on a Bible, would be the truth.