Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar stayed at the Tu­na­puna home of Mau­reen and Ralph Gopaul for three months af­ter the May 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion to save tax­pay­ers the ex­pense of stay­ing at the Hy­att or Hilton, PP Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal said yes­ter­day.Mooni­lal, who is leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the Low­er House, came to the Sen­ate to re­spond to a ques­tion from PNM Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds on the house is­sue con­cern­ing the Prime Min­is­ter.Hinds placed the query on the Sen­ate agen­da in rais­ing ques­tions re­cent­ly whether the own­er of the Tu­na­puna house was re­ceiv­ing a $40 mil­lion NP truck­ing con­tract and was the pre­ferred bid­der for it.Yes­ter­day in the Sen­ate, Mooni­lal not­ed the links be­ing made on the is­sue by Hinds, say­ing:

"No con­tract has been award­ed by NP...the Prime Min­is­ter has not been and will nev­er be in­volved in is­suance of con­tracts at state com­pa­nies."I'm ask­ing that Sen­a­tor Hinds cease and de­sist from at­tempt­ing to make un­found­ed scan­dalous in­fer­ences from such a de­vel­op­ment," Mooni­lal added.

Hinds told the T&T Guardian af­ter the Sen­ate that he had no in­ten­tion of "ceas­ing de­sist­ing," and is fil­ing fur­ther ques­tions to get to the bot­tom of the mat­ter.He said he was shocked that Mooni­lal would call on him to halt his con­sti­tu­tion­al du­ty of scru­ti­n­is­ing the Gov­ern­ment and hold­ing it ac­count­able.Mooni­lal told the Sen­ate he was au­tho­rised by the Cab­i­net to pro­vide the re­sponse on the ques­tion.He said the Tu­na­puna res­i­dence be­longed to Mau­reen and Ralph Gopaul "to whom the Prime Min­is­ter is ac­quaint­ed."Mooni­lal said Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­lowed for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to take his time to pack up and "make a peace­ful farewell" to peo­ple at the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fi­cial res­i­dence in St Ann's.He said Man­ning ac­cept­ed the of­fer to re­main at the res­i­dence af­ter the elec­tion.Mooni­lal said Per­sad-Bisses­sar had of­fered the of­fi­cial res­i­dence to the Pres­i­dent to use be­cause of the con­di­tion at Pres­i­dent's House.

"The Prime Min­is­ter, to fa­cil­i­tate a very hec­tic en­gage­ment sched­ule, in­clud­ing meet­ings, and to main­tain a reg­u­lar pres­ence at the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fice in St Clair, chose to stay at times, gen­er­al­ly dur­ing the week, at the Tu­na­puna res­i­dence," he said.He said she opt­ed for this since stay­ing at an ex­ec­u­tive suite at the Hy­att or Hilton would have in­curred ad­di­tion­al ex­pense to tax­pay­ers.Mooni­lal said the State did not bear any rental ex­pense for the Tu­na­puna stay.He said the Prime Min­is­ter moved in­to the St Ann's res­i­dence by Au­gust 31, 2010.Mooni­lal said over Oc­to­ber 2005 to De­cem­ber 2007, Man­ning had stayed at St Vin­cent Av­enue, Fed­er­a­tion Park, which was owned by Vin­fred In­vest­ments Ltd, at a cost of $1.3 mil­lion.He said a George Joseph had an in­ter­est in that prop­er­ty.Ac­knowl­edg­ing that a deep­er is­sue lay at the heart of the ques­tions on the house, Mooni­lal said:

"One might ask if the good­ly sen­a­tor is sug­gest­ing that any busi­ness per­son or any group of busi­ness peo­ple who is ac­quaint­ed with the Prime Min­is­ter or any politi­cians are dis­qual­i­fied from ac­cess­ing Gov­ern­ment goods or ser­vices or from ac­cess­ing con­tracts on of­fer by Gov­ern­ment."Mooni­lal said the per­son in ques­tion had been in op­er­a­tion for eight to ten years and had won con­tracts un­der the PNM Gov­ern­ment."One should not brand every­one as cor­rupt or crim­i­nals-the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion should be mea­sured by the Calder Hart yard­stick," he added.He said the Gov­ern­ment had an equal op­por­tu­ni­ty busi­ness pol­i­cy and op­er­at­ed on the ba­sis of trans­paren­cy and cor­rect pro­ce­dure.Mooni­lal clashed with PNM sen­a­tors Faris Al Rawi and Ter­rence Deyals­ingh on ques­tions about the con­tract.