Gail Alexan­der

If a se­nior PNM mem­ber "en­joys lux­u­ry rides" on a friend's yacht or vis­its the lux­u­ri­ous home of an­oth­er and is "wined and dined," does this mean that such per­sons should not re­ceive con­tracts if the PNM ever as­sumes Gov­ern­ment? That's the ques­tion Gary Grif­fith, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er to the Prime Min­is­ter, is pos­ing fol­low­ing com­ments by for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's state­ments about the rental of a Fed­er­a­tion Park house be­tween 2005 and 2007.

Grif­fith al­so replied to PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley's con­tin­u­ing at­tack on the Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing an NP con­tract. The PNM has tak­en Gov­ern­ment to task on the is­sue and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's stay at a Tu­na­puna house in May 2010 owned by one of the bid­ders for the NP award. The State rent­ed a Fed­er­a­tion Park house owned by Vinsed In­vest­ments Ltd, for Man­ning's oc­cu­pan­cy while the Prime Min­is­ter's St Ann's res­i­dence was be­ing ren­o­vat­ed. This was at a cost of $1.3 mil­lion over the two-year pe­ri­od.

Man­ning, how­ev­er, said Per­sad-Bisses­sar should not have stayed at a Tu­na­puna res­i­dence, owned by busi­ness­man Ralph Gopaul, af­ter the 2010 elec­tion. While he stayed at his south home and com­mut­ed for eight months af­ter be­com­ing PM in 2001, Man­ning said he had to stay at Fed­er­a­tion Park over 2005-2007 be­cause it was nec­es­sary to be in the cap­i­tal for work. Grif­fith how­ev­er replied: "So Man­ning stays at a house in Port-of-Spain be­cause of his work sched­ule and it costs the State over $1.3 mil­lion, but the new PM does the same, at no cost to the State and it is an is­sue-that is bla­tant hypocrisy of the PNM.

"The on­ly dif­fer­ence be­tween these two sce­nar­ios is that one as­so­ciate did not charge the PM to stay at Tu­na­puna. So does it mean if the Gopauls had sent a cos­met­ic bill and caused the tax­pay­ers to be bur­dened with this cost, that there would not have been a prob­lem?" Grif­fith claimed, "If a very se­nior PNM mem­ber who I know for ex­am­ple en­joys lux­u­ry rides on a friend's yacht on week­ends and vis­its the home of an­oth­er who has a lux­u­ri­ous home and he is wined and dined, and be­cause they are busi­ness­men-not that it would ever hap­pen in his life­time, but if PNM was in Gov­ern­ment-does this mean that such per­sons should not re­ceive con­tracts and be vic­timised?"

Grif­fith added: "The PNM's over­all ar­gu­ments make no sense. How far and ridicu­lous can this go? There have been US Pres­i­dents and oth­er world lead­ers who stay at the homes of good friends who are busi­ness­men, when they go on va­ca­tion. "Not once have their po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents been so pet­ty and des­per­ate to find a red her­ring such as this to make it an is­sue. No­body is ac­cus­ing GV Hold­ings or Vinsed of do­ing any­thing wrong, be­cause there is ab­solute­ly noth­ing wrong if you can ac­com­mo­date a PM and re­ceive sev­er­al State con­tracts." Grif­fith added, "Whether you are friends with a Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial or not is not the is­sue for se­lec­tion of con­tracts but what mat­ters is if you are ca­pa­ble of do­ing the job."