To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?The hand­ing over of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry re­port in­to the con­struc­tion sec­tor, the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) and Cleaver Heights by com­mis­sion chair­man Prof John Uff to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards is sim­ply the end of the first part of the process.

As Prof Uff ex­plained in a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the process be­gan back in 2008 when Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning ac­qui­esced to pub­lic de­mands and ap­point­ed a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry to in­ves­ti­gate the con­struc­tion sec­tor and Ude­cott. Be­fore he ap­point­ed the com­mis­sion, on May 23, Mr Man­ning had first con­tem­plat­ed a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee, but he was forced to with­draw that idea be­cause of pub­lic out­rage. And it was sim­i­lar out­rage that led the Prime Min­is­ter to with­draw the name of the first chair­man of the com­mis­sion, Gor­don Deane, who had served as chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. Mr Deane, who said he with­drew be­cause he had re­ceived threats, head­ed the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion that re­ferred a mat­ter con­cern­ing es­tranged PNM MP, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) with­out first no­ti­fy­ing Dr Row­ley that he was the sub­ject of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Some time lat­er, the terms of ref­er­ence of the com­mis­sion were widened to in­clude the Cleaver Heights hous­ing de­vel­op­ment in Ari­ma af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter made al­le­ga­tions in Par­lia­ment about $10 mil­lion be­ing miss­ing. Those al­le­ga­tions tar­get­ed Dr Row­ley and the con­struc­tion firm, NH In­ter­na­tion­al, whose ex­ec­u­tive chair­man is Emile Elias.

The Com­mis­sion of En­quiry, there­fore, is tied up with the in­ternecine bat­tle that has been wag­ing with­in the rul­ing par­ty for some years now. The coun­try is quite for­tu­nate to have reached this point. Ei­ther the fail­ure to for­mal­ly gazette the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry, as is re­quired by law, or stren­u­ous at­tempts by lawyers act­ing on be­half of for­mer Ude­cott ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart and Ude­cott it­self could have scup­pered the process of dis­cov­ery of wrong­do­ing and cor­rup­tion in the con­struc­tion sec­tor that the Gov­ern­ment un­der­took at huge ex­pense and con­sid­er­able time. The coun­try owes a debt of grat­i­tude, there­fore, to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie–for tabling the val­i­dat­ing leg­is­la­tion which pro­vid­ed post-fac­to le­git­i­ma­cy to the process–and to High Court Judge Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er, who slapped down the Ude­cott at­tempts to have the re­port thrown out on the grounds of ap­par­ent bias ear­li­er this month. For the process to be com­plet­ed, and for the in­vest­ment of time and mon­ey to be worth­while, Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning must make the en­tire re­port pub­lic, ex­cept those parts of it which may prej­u­dice the pros­e­cu­tion of those who the re­port in­di­cates may be guilty of break­ing the law. As­pects of the re­port that point di­rect­ly or even in­di­rect­ly to il­le­gal­i­ty or cor­rup­tion must be sent to the DPP, who would be ex­pect­ed to add the sup­po­si­tions or ev­i­dence in the re­port to oth­er ev­i­dence he may have col­lect­ed from po­lice in­quiries both here and over­seas.

As the Prime Min­is­ter has said on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions: Let the chips fall where they may. But while the un­earthing of il­le­gal­i­ty and cor­rup­tion is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to the task of mov­ing the con­struc­tion sec­tor for­ward, Prof Uff not­ed yes­ter­day that the re­port con­tains 91 rec­om­men­da­tions.

It can be sur­mised that many of those rec­om­men­da­tions would iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial flaws (and pos­si­ble im­prove­ments) in the way the Gov­ern­ment and its main con­struc­tion agent, Ude­cott, han­dled the con­struc­tion boom that last­ed from 2003 to 2008. It is hoped that the Gov­ern­ment adopts a ma­ture ap­proach to these rec­om­men­da­tions and makes every ef­fort to right the wrongs in the con­struc­tion sec­tor for the long-term ben­e­fit of the coun­try. It would be a huge tragedy, for which it would have to pay a dear po­lit­i­cal price, if the Gov­ern­ment were to treat the con­struc­tion rec­om­men­da­tions in the way it treat­ed the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the health sec­tor some years ago. It re­mains for us to ex­tend our thanks and ap­pre­ci­a­tion, on be­half of the na­tion, to all of the com­mis­sion­ers: chair­man John Uff, Desmond Thorn­hill, Ken­neth Sir­ju and Is­rael Khan for their per­se­ver­ance and for­ti­tude and to Prof Uff and Mr Thorn­hill, in par­tic­u­lar, for com­plet­ing the task of writ­ing the re­port af­ter their col­leagues with­drew.