To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

If any­one has to feel "ashamed" about any­thing, it is Min­is­ter Emi­ly Dick-Forde and her Cab­i­net col­leagues for the man­ner they have han­dled the is­sues sur­round­ing Ude­cott and the al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion with re­gard to the award of con­tracts and the pro­cure­ment of goods and ser­vices. Not once in the more than three to four years of al­le­ga­tions, con­tract fail­ures, ob­vi­ous mis­man­age­ment of projects has this Gov­ern­ment come for­ward with a state­ment of con­cern for the in­tegri­ty of the ex­pen­di­ture of bil­lions of dol­lars, the pat­ri­mo­ny of this and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. In­stead, all the coun­try has had are staunch and on oc­ca­sion quite il­log­i­cal de­fences of Calder Hart and Ude­cott with­out a sub­stan­ti­at­ing state­ment based on gov­ern­ment over­sight of this state agency.

In this re­spect, as the line min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for Ude­cott, Min­is­ter Dick-Forde would do well to give the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, to whom she is re­spon­si­ble, an ob­jec­tive as­sess­ment of how she has man­aged this state en­ter­prise in­volved in the award of bil­lions of dol­lars in con­tracts. In­stead, she gives this com­plete­ly gra­tu­itous and ar­ro­gant ad­vice to cit­i­zens about who and what they should be em­bar­rassed about. What this min­is­ter is re­al­ly say­ing to the na­tion is that it should have no ques­tions about how its funds are be­ing spent in the light of se­ri­ous ques­tions raised about the ex­pen­di­ture of those funds. The min­is­ter is con­tent to in­sult an en­tire na­tion by sug­gest­ing that the coun­try has treat­ed Mr Hart "very, very bad­ly," when most peo­ple, even those deeply aligned to the rul­ing par­ty, would con­cede that the ex­act op­po­site is the truth.

And there are these yet-to-be-an­swered al­le­ga­tions of malfea­sance about the award of con­tracts to a com­pa­ny with two of its di­rec­tors, al­leged­ly, be­ing close rel­a­tives of the wife of ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Mr Hart. Why does the min­is­ter not tell the na­tion that, hav­ing had the al­le­ga­tion in­ves­ti­gat­ed, the Gov­ern­ment can cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly state that that is not so. Some­one should qui­et­ly in­form this min­is­ter where sov­er­eign­ty lies, who owns the re­sources of this coun­try, and who she is work­ing for. How does Min­is­ter Dick-Forde com­pare her as­ser­tion that the na­tion needs to apol­o­gise for ask­ing some ques­tions about its own wel­fare with the ag­gres­sive de­mand by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, aid­ed and abet­ted by her­self, for the $10 mil­lion that was sup­posed to have been miss­ing in the Cleaver Heights hous­ing project?

The Prime Min­is­ter all but ac­cused his for­mer se­nior min­is­ter of know­ing some­thing about the un­ac­count­ed for $10 mil­lion while Min­is­ter Dick-Forde in­sti­tut­ed a foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the "un­ac­count­ed" for $10 mil­lion. In de­fend­ing that de­ci­sion, the min­is­ter was ab­solute­ly con­vinced about the right­ness of her de­ci­sion. But pre­sum­ably em­bar­rassed that the re­sults of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion did not in­dict Dr Row­ley for fraud, at min­i­mum hav­ing some knowl­edge of it, she then act­ed as if there was no in­ves­ti­ga­tion. But now in the face of far more per­sua­sive in­for­ma­tion about pos­si­ble wrong­do­ing in­volv­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, in­fi­nite­ly more than the $10 mil­lion, the Gov­ern­ment does lit­tle and the na­tion is faced with a dis­re­spect­ful, je­june min­is­ter who deigns to lec­ture the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty about how it should re­act to the re­cent events.

But this news­pa­per ex­pects far more from Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. We ex­pect the Prime Min­is­ter will come to the na­tion with a full state­ment that ex­plains the Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion and the steps that have been tak­en to fix the gov­er­nance and pro­cure­ment is­sues that plague the coun­try. Giv­en At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie's news con­fer­ence late yes­ter­day, the Gov­ern­ment al­so needs to be clear about who is lead­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to these mat­ters and on whose di­rec­tion. And for the peo­ple of T&T, it must be re­mem­bered that we live un­der a sys­tem in which some­one is pre­sumed to be in­no­cent un­til they are found guilty of a crime.