Gail Alexan­der

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an must ex­plain why At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan's de­part­ment was al­lo­cat­ed al­most $200 mil­lion for 2011 and 2012 to pay le­gal fees for ex­ter­nal as­sis­tance, says PNM chief whip Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, "Who is the A-team feed­ing at the trough of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al? Mr Min­is­ter, you need to ex­plain! T&T needs an ex­pla­na­tion!" Mc­Don­ald said in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day. Speak­ing in the Low­er House's 2012 bud­get de­bate, Mc­Don­ald said the bud­get was "one of the worst bud­get state­ments" she had ever seen.

Not­ing a 2012 al­lo­ca­tion of $94.9 mil­lion for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice to pay le­gal fees, Mc­Don­ald said that in­clud­ed $50 mil­lion for foren­sic fees, $33 mil­lion for re­tain­ing lo­cal and for­eign ex­perts, $3 mil­lion for sim­i­lar ex­pens­es and $8.5 mil­lion for 'oth­er ex­pens­es'. "What­ev­er 'oth­er' means...As a for­mer stu­dent of ac­counts I know when you put 'oth­er' and 'mis­cel­la­neous' and 'con­tin­gen­cies' I know you have prob­lems in there. Go and start look­ing. What is the 'oth­er' in­volv­ing this $8.5 mil­lion?" Mc­Don­ald asked. She added: "The min­is­ter needs to de­fine what is the 'oth­er,' The na­tion needs to un­der­stand what is be­ing de­rived from this $50 mil­lion in foren­sic fees, "What you'll get from $33 mil­lion be­ing paid as re­tain­ers to for­eign and lo­cal at­tor­neys."

Mc­Don­ald said the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, the of­fi­cial body to in­ves­ti­gate pub­lic of­fi­cials, on­ly re­ceived $25.7 mil­lion of which pay­ment for le­gal fees was on­ly $2.5 mil­lion. She said that fig­ure was pre­vi­ous­ly $720,000. Mc­Don­ald added: "They (In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion) asked for a lit­tle more as they are be­ing squeezed to car­ry out their du­ties and func­tions. "Yet this At­tor­ney Gen­er­al spent $108.9 mil­lion in 2011, so who is feed­ing at the trough? The Fi­nance Min­is­ter must jus­ti­fy this to­tal of al­most $200 mil­lion in le­gal fees over 2011 and 2012 by the AG's de­part­ment."

Mc­Don­ald, for­mer com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter, re­butted Gov­ern­ment' ac­cu­sa­tion on Mon­day about racial dis­crim­i­na­tion un­der the PNM in the schol­ar­ship bur­sary fund un­der the then com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment min­istry. Mc­Don­ald said she tem­porar­i­ly closed the pro­gramme when she be­came min­is­ter in 2008 for her to get a bet­ter idea of what it in­volved and to re­struc­ture it. She said she re­moved her­self as min­is­ter from the process which was han­dled by a team head­ed by Wayne Wood and "prop­er sys­tems were" im­ple­ment­ed.

Mc­Don­ald said while the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty pub­licly sup­port­ed the state of emer­gency, they pri­vate­ly urged the PNM to try to get rid of it due to eco­nom­ic loss­es it was caus­ing them. "But they 'fraid the Gov­ern­ment. If it was the PNM, they would have been protest­ing," Mc­Don­ald added. She dis­missed pro­posed tourism plans for Laven­tille, say­ing such plans by the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion in 1996 had failed. "Yet this Gov­ern­ment is com­ing back to do it. But you stereo­type the peo­ple of the area, deem it a hotspot and ar­rest youths with­out ev­i­dence, We don't trust you. You're not cred­i­ble," Mc­Don­ald added. She said there was un­re­al­is­ti­cal­ly pro­ject­ed growth and rev­enue in the bud­get, con­sid­er­ing glob­al sce­nar­ios and Gov­ern­ment was out of touch with eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties.