To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

The de­par­ture of Calder Hart from all of the pub­lic of­fices he holds and, ap­par­ent­ly, Trinidad and To­ba­go, stands in sharp con­trast to his steady, im­placa­ble 24-year rise through the ranks of civ­il gov­ern­ment and his even­tu­al anoint­ing by the Prime Min­is­ter as con­struc­tion czar in the Ude­cott era. Long be­fore the for­mal an­nounce­ment by Ude­cott on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon, the na­tion was abuzz through so­cial net­works and text mes­sages about Hart's res­ig­na­tion. Un­ques­tion­ably, Calder Hart's stew­ard­ship of Ude­cott dur­ing the most vig­or­ous ex­pan­sion pe­ri­od of that state cor­po­ra­tion's ex­is­tence has been a key el­e­ment in all of the ques­tions that have been asked about the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor dur­ing the last two years. Those ques­tions have be­come in­creas­ing­ly more point­ed and per­son­al, since Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj not­ed in Par­lia­ment that there were fa­mil­ial links be­tween Sun­way Con­struc­tion and Hart's wife, Sher­rine.

Af­ter Mrs Hart's ex-hus­band, Carl Khan, pro­vid­ed ev­i­dence sup­port­ing Ma­haraj's claims, Cab­i­net award­ed Sun­way a $300-mil­lion con­tract for the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er, a project which has since been sub­ject to sharp cost in­creas­es. Re­cent­ly, doc­u­ments ob­tained by Con­gress of the Peo­ple have sur­faced, pro­vid­ing what ap­pears to be more ev­i­dence of such links, and raise the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Hart lied to the com­mis­sion un­der oath. But these are not the on­ly ex­am­ples of poor judg­ment demon­strat­ed by Calder Hart dur­ing his tenure as, inar­guably, the most pow­er­ful man in the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor. Calder Hart has nev­er sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly re­spond­ed to ac­cu­sa­tions that a fax num­ber for Sun­way was an­swered in his home, nor has he ex­plained how he came to sell his yacht to the pres­i­dent of a com­pa­ny bid­ding for Ude­cott con­tracts.

Be­yond Hart's per­son­al mis­judg­ments, there is the weight of ev­i­dence against Ude­cott as an or­gan­i­sa­tion and its fail­ure to im­ple­ment prop­er con­tract re­view on a num­ber of projects it award­ed. The most no­table and hu­mil­i­at­ing of these is the Tarou­ba Sta­di­um, which has been un­der con­struc­tion since 2006. Sched­uled to open in 2007, the sta­di­um is still to be com­plet­ed. De­spite the rigour of the Prime Min­is­ter's de­fence of his con­struc­tion czar, the sud­den de­par­ture of Calder Hart can on­ly be traced back to his ex­ec­u­tive in­flu­ence.

That de­ci­sion, in the face of the par­ty's re­fusal on Fri­day to de­bate is­sues re­lat­ed to the Ude­cott chair­man, rais­es even more ques­tions about Hart's de fac­to lead­er­ship of the lo­cal con­struc­tion in­dus­try.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is owed, by no less than Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, a full ex­pla­na­tion of the cir­cum­stances of Calder Hart's res­ig­na­tion and the mea­sures that the gov­ern­ment will be tak­ing to as­sure re­view of the works he has been re­spon­si­ble for, and the suc­ces­sion con­tin­u­ance plan­ning for his now-va­cat­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. The Ude­cott board must ac­knowl­edge the need to thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gate the lega­cy of Calder Hart's tenure, and giv­en their un­stint­ing sup­port of their chair­man and their stat­ed com­mit­ment to the hon­est ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties; they should do the ho­n­ourable thing and demit of­fice. More crit­i­cal even than the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of Ude­cott is the more wide-rang­ing need to re­form the sys­tems of pro­cure­ment utilised by state cor­po­ra­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the new "spe­cial pur­pose" state en­ter­pris­es, in light of the ease with which even ex­ist­ing mea­sures were flout­ed un­der Hart's reign.

Ear­ly in its as­sump­tion of ad­min­is­tra­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the na­tion's af­fairs, the Gov­ern­ment put out a White Pa­per on pro­cure­ment, but that doc­u­ment nev­er be­came pol­i­cy. In light of the ev­i­dence of­fered to the Uff Com­mis­sion on the con­struc­tion sec­tor and the like­ly con­tent of the re­port to be ten­dered to the Pres­i­dent, there is clear­ly need for a new dis­cus­sion on State pro­cure­ment and a re­al need for new poli­cies to be put in place, with ap­pro­pri­ate penal­ties for by­pass­ing these sore­ly-need­ed safe­guards.