To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

If, ac­cord­ing to AG John Je­re­mie, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning stands vin­di­cat­ed by the Uff Re­port for his pur­suit of the $10 mil­lion dis­crep­an­cy on the Cleaver Heights hous­ing project, by the same log­ic the Prime Min­is­ter and his en­tire Cab­i­net must be crim­i­nal­ly neg­li­gent in fail­ing to pre­vent the pil­lage of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars on sev­er­al con­struc­tion projects un­der­tak­en by Ude­cott. Sad­ly, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's state­ment in the Par­lia­ment on Tues­day in lay­ing the Uff Re­port on­ly il­lus­trat­ed the deep bias held by the Gov­ern­ment in the mat­ters probed in the Uff en­quiry. In his 36-minute state­ment, Mr Je­re­mie sought to de­flect at­ten­tion from the nu­mer­ous fun­da­men­tal trans­gres­sions of Ude­cott as cit­ed by the Uff re­port, in­stead of shin­ing light on these trans­gres­sions. Con­tin­u­ing the war against the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor start­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al picked and chose the com­ments and con­clu­sions in the re­port that dealt with the in­ad­e­qua­cies of lo­cal con­trac­tors in gen­er­al.

He sought des­per­ate­ly to plead a case for how right and jus­ti­fied Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning was in seek­ing to save the coun­try from a pos­si­ble $10 mil­lion ad­di­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture on Cleaver Heights, but he was hope­less­ly silent on how neg­li­gent, per­haps crim­i­nal­ly so, the Prime Min­is­ter and his Cab­i­net have been in not de­tect­ing the ab­solute de­fi­cien­cies of Ude­cott, its chair­man and the board in the han­dling of the Tarou­ba sta­di­um and the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs projects, as point­ed out by the Uff Com­mis­sion. In­deed, he ne­glect­ed to point out that the com­mis­sion found the in­sti­tu­tion­al struc­ture of Ude­cott se­ri­ous­ly flawed, and "that there should be no doubt as to the pow­er of min­is­ters to give in­struc­tions to gov­ern­ment agency com­pa­nies on any mat­ter with­in the min­is­ter's re­mit..." While prais­ing the val­ue of the de­sign-con­struct mod­el em­ployed by the Gov­ern­ment, the AG did not let nary a word slip from his mouth on the com­mis­sion's ob­ser­va­tion that for­eign con­trac­tors must be made to de­vel­op and en­hance the ca­pac­i­ty of the lo­cal in­dus­try.

He avoid­ed too the find­ings of the com­mis­sion­ers that Gov­ern­ment hand­ed com­plete pow­er to the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Ude­cott, Calder Hart, against the best ad­vice and the pru­dence of age-old wis­dom. And while the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ab­stract­ed long pas­sages of the re­port on in­ad­e­qua­cies of su­per­vi­sion on Cleaver Heights, he ne­glect­ed quotes such as this about Ude­cott's op­er­a­tions: "Is­sues con­cern­ing fi­nan­cial ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Bri­an Lara project are noth­ing short of scan­dalous." There was no men­tion by Mr Je­re­mie about Ude­cott's "ex­ces­sive and un­fair us­es of sole se­lec­tive ten­der­ing pow­ers con­trary to free and fair com­pe­ti­tion and trans­paren­cy." Nei­ther did he both­er to dis­turb the Sen­ate about "the mis­use or ma­nip­u­la­tion of ten­der and ten­der re­view pro­ce­dures lead­ing to the in­ap­pro­pri­ate and po­ten­tial­ly cor­rupt award of con­tracts." While the de­lays and the es­ca­la­tion in the cost of the Tarou­ba sta­di­um would have trou­bled most cit­i­zens con­cerned about val­ue for mon­ey, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al found no time to ex­plain the dra­mat­ic near tripling in the sta­di­um's cost nor the fail­ure of the con­trac­tor to de­liv­er the project af­ter four years on the job.

In de­fence of their stew­ard­ship, the AG and the Gov­ern­ment would claim that they have made the re­port pub­lic and ini­ti­at­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions against Mr Hart and the board. They had lit­tle op­tion but to do so giv­en the vig­or­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tion pur­sued by the op­po­si­tion par­ties and the re­portage and analy­sis of the me­dia. Tues­day's speech was a trans­par­ent at­tempt by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to so dis­tort the re­al­i­ty of the find­ings to make as if the known de­fi­cien­cies of the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor were the ma­jor find­ings of the Uff Com­mis­sion. It would not be sur­pris­ing if the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty were to find the AG guilty of ne­glect­ing to cham­pi­on the in­ter­est of his clients, the peo­ple of T&T, in favour of his Prime Min­is­ter and Gov­ern­ment.