Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

In a scathing at­tack on his po­lit­i­cal leader and Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, Diego Mar­tin West MP Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day said the af­fairs of con­tro­ver­sial State-owned Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) "smells to the high heav­ens." He said the PNM was be­ing put on tri­al be­cause of the sup­port its po­lit­i­cal leader Man­ning was giv­ing to the con­tro­ver­sial Ude­cott. In an an­i­mat­ed hour-long pre­sen­ta­tion in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Row­ley sup­port­ed the leg­is­la­tion to val­i­date and pro­tect the work of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry set up to in­ves­ti­gate Ude­cott and the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor. He ex­pressed strong dis­ap­proval against ac­tions of Ude­cott to con­done prac­tices that were against its own ten­der pro­ce­dures. "The tail is not to wag the dog. The dog is to car­ry the tail and keep its tail be­hind it," Row­ley said. He al­so be­came en­raged af­ter dis­cussing le­gal ac­tion by Ude­cott to ob­tain a stay on the op­er­a­tions of the com­mis­sion.

He said: "There are those of us in the PNM, for the PNM, who sup­port the PNM, who want no part of this. "The PNM has fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples about moral­i­ty and pub­lic af­fairs. Those prin­ci­ples are com­ing un­der at­tack and I am putting you un­der no­tice. The next elec­tion would be the Ude­cott elec­tion said. "(John) O'Hal­lo­ran (a PNM min­is­ter who was found guilty of cor­rup­tion) has re­ced­ed in­to the back­ground. There are oth­er names to be called." Row­ley re­mind­ed his oth­er PNM MPs about the stig­ma from the O'Hal­lo­ran scan­dal that af­fect­ed the PNM's abil­i­ty to cam­paign for elec­tions in the 1980s. He said: "This coun­try has to un­der­stand that some­times you have to break the mould to make a new shape and I am break­ing it on be­half of all of the PNM peo­ple who, in 1986, when we went to cam­paign in my area... they (were) slam­ming doors in your face in West­moor­ings, in Glen­coe, in Bayshore and all they (are) telling you about is O'Hal­lo­ran."

He said the Ude­cott fi­as­co looked at least ten times worse than the al­leged cor­rup­tion in the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. He added: "That is what we are be­ing called up­on to do. And those of you, those of you who think I am be­ing (an) ob­struc­tion­ist... what we are be­ing called up­on to do by a small clique of peo­ple in the coun­try is to sup­port wrong­do­ing, (to) pre­tend not to know and see if we can ride it out. We are not go­ing to ride it out." He gave sev­er­al ex­am­ples of dis­crep­an­cies in the con­duct of busi­ness at Ude­cott. Among these in­clud­ed the role of lo­cal con­trac­tor Hafeez Kara­math in a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Val­sayn land trans­ac­tion with the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, in which In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor and Ude­cott di­rec­tor Michael An­nisette was in­volved. "Land owned by Ude­cott, Kara­math gets the con­tract with no com­pe­ti­tion. And there is bank Ude­cott... bank Ude­cott, yes, be­cause part of that arrange­ment was that Kara­math would be fi­nanced by Ude­cott.

"So Calder Hart, the (ex­ec­u­tive) chair­man of Ude­cott goes to Calder Hart the chair­man of the Home Mort­gage Bank and or­ders $170 mil­lion and hands to the con­trac­tor (who had a con­tract of) $134 mil­lion," Row­ley said. He ex­pressed an­noy­ance that the con­tract was award­ed to Hafeez Kara­math Lim­it­ed with no com­pe­ti­tion, no ten­der and that "Hart from Ude­cott, bor­rows from Hart from Home Mort­gage Bank $170 mil­lion." Row­ley said: "Now the ques­tion is this, if the con­tract was award­ed for $134 mil­lion, why was Ude­cott bor­row­ing $170 mil­lion for the con­tact?" Row­ley claimed that there was no truth that Kara­math had joint own­er­ship in the land. And, he added that it went from the Na­tion­al Hous­ing Au­thor­i­ty to the NUGFW to Ude­cott and "nowhere would it show that it is owned by Hafeez Kara­math." Row­ley al­so dis­missed Hart's ex­cuse that his and Sun­way's fax num­ber were not the same. "If the tech­nol­o­gy ex­ists for Sun­way to make a com­put­er glitch in Glen­coe and gen­er­ate a num­ber in Cas­cade, how come then the same tele­phone num­ber ap­peared on the rub­ber stamp of Sun­way?" Row­ley asked.

"And that is what I am be­ing asked to de­fend and there is no way that I as a PNM MP de­fend­ing that. Next week, I will be 60 years old. I am a pen­sion­er and I am good to go. 'Go qui­et­ly,' as I was ad­vised, is not on." He said: "As I told the Prime Min­is­ter when he fired me and asked me to go qui­et­ly, it is not on. I rep­re­sent the peo­ple and I have a job to do. Let the records show that when this was go­ing on, one mem­ber of the PNM stood up and said in the name of the PNM, this must not go on. "We have seen where we have come from and we are see­ing where we are go­ing and, for me, it is the biggest is­sue." Row­ley called on the Prime Min­is­ter to stand up in the Par­lia­ment and dis­pute the truth of his state­ments. "That has to be wrong (Ude­cott's le­gal chal­lenge against the com­mis­sion). No coun­try should ac­cept that from any Prime Min­is­ter. But as a coun­try, I do not care who you vote for. I do not care who you wor­ship, gov­ern­ment in any coun­try is dam­aged by that kind of be­hav­iour and if this coun­try can­not call to or­der its Prime Min­is­ter and his Cab­i­net and a po­lit­i­cal par­ty to say we are not ac­cept­ing that, God help us be­cause those who are hired ought nev­er to get big­ger than the peo­ple who hired them," Row­ley said.

"But me in the Cab­i­net, I am dis­missed from the Cab­i­net and slan­dered for mis­con­duct but no­body could say what the mis­con­duct is. Do me a favour Prime Min­is­ter, in this de­bate, get up and tell the coun­try what I did in the Cab­i­net." He added that each school child in T&T knew "there was some­thing in this coun­try called Ude­cott and its smells to the high heav­ens and this prob­lem ought to dealt with by chang­ing the board."

Kam­la is not sur­prised:

?UNC deputy leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said last night:

"It's not sur­pris­ing the state­ments com­ing from PNM MP Kei­th Row­ley. It is ex­act­ly what we have been say­ing about cor­rup­tion, ex­cept this time the state­ments are com­ing from the bow­els of the PNM. "It proves what we have said that the PNM is the most cor­rupt Gov­ern­ment this coun­try has ever seen."