Pri­or Be­har­ry

The Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) has been grant­ed leave to file for ju­di­cial re­view, chal­leng­ing the va­lid­i­ty of Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Ude­cott and the con­struc­tion sec­tor.

Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er, pre­sid­ing in the Port-of-Spain High Court, made the or­der yes­ter­day. The judge has sched­uled next Fri­day to hear oral ap­pli­ca­tion on what in­ter­im re­liefs will be grant­ed while the sub­stan­tive mat­ter is be­ing heard. Ude­cott has filed the mat­ter against the three com­mis­sion­ers–Ken­neth Sir­ju, Desmond Thorn­hill and chair­man John Uff. Among the in­ter­im re­liefs, Ude­cott is ask­ing for the com­mis­sion­ers not to pro­ceed any fur­ther with the in­quiry un­til the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the sub­stan­tive mat­ter. It al­so wants the com­mis­sion­ers pro­hib­it­ed from draft­ing any re­port un­til the ju­di­cial re­view case is de­ter­mined.

In the sub­stan­tive mat­ter, Ude­cot will chal­lenge the va­lid­i­ty of the com­mis­sion on the ba­sis of it not be­ing gazetted for the du­ra­tion of its hear­ings. Ude­cott will state that al­though the com­mis­sion was pub­lished in an ex­tra­or­di­nary edi­tion of the Gazette on Sep­tem­ber 11, this does not have retroac­tive ef­fect. The state en­ter­prise is al­so claim­ing bias against for­mer com­mis­sion­er Is­rael Khan and cur­rent com­mis­sion­er Sir­ju. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie yes­ter­day in­tro­duced a val­i­da­tion bill in the Sen­ate to val­i­date the work of the sus­pend­ed com­mis­sion of en­quiry (See Page A5).

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment on Sep­tem­ber 11, Je­re­mie an­nounced that re­tired Jus­tice of Ap­peal An­tho­ny Lucky would con­duct an "ur­gent probe" on how the Gov­ern­ment failed to com­ply with the le­gal re­quire­ment to pub­lish in the Gazette, the hold­ing of the com­mis­sion of en­quiry. The com­mis­sion be­gan pub­lic hear­ings on Jan­u­ary 12. It was sus­pend­ed ear­ly this month by Uff be­cause of the er­ror. Rep­re­sent­ing Ude­cott in the ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion are Queen's Coun­sel An­drew God­dard, Frank Solomon, SC, and De­vesh Ma­haraj, who are in­struct­ed by Vanes­sa Mo­hammed of the firm Pol­lon­ais, Blanc, de la Bastide and Jacelon.