Ken Ali

?Q: You have a lone­ly po­si­tion on Ude­cott. You are in­sist­ing that the State Cor­po­ra­tion did not get a fair shake from the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry. What is the ev­i­dence of bias?

A: When the chair­man of the Com­mis­sion, be­fore hear­ing the ev­i­dence from Ude­cott, says words to the ef­fect, "It seems as if Ude­cott was op­er­at­ing as a law un­to it­self...," there is a strong pre­sump­tion that he has made up his mind with­out hear­ing the oth­er side.

How would you like to be in a mat­ter be­fore a judge who makes that kind of com­ment about you be­fore you had a chance to put your side of the sto­ry?

Why did Uff al­low at­tor­neys for the oth­er side no time lim­it to make their open­ing sub­mis­sions, but seek to put Ude­cott's at­tor­neys un­der man­ners by giv­ing them un­der 45 min­utes to make their open­ing sub­mis­sions?

Why did Uff get cer­tain writ­ten sub­mis­sions from ex-em­ploy­ees of Ude­cott and, at first, refuse to show them to Ude­cott's lawyers and then agree on­ly on the con­di­tion that they do not show it to their client?

How can a lawyer deal with ev­i­dence from the oth­er side if he is not al­lowed to find out from his client what the client has to say about the ev­i­dence?

There are lots of oth­er ex­am­ples, but hope­ful­ly you get the point.

Was there al­so me­dia bias?

Why has the me­dia not re­port­ed on any of the mat­ters that show bias by the

Com­mis­sion?

Why has the me­dia not re­port­ed, or ex­plained with suf­fi­cient clar­i­ty, as to why Ude­cott's lawyers have ap­plied for pro­tec­tion of the court by way of ju­di­cial re­view?

Why has the me­dia re­fused to pub­lish any sto­ries that might show Ude­cott in a dif­fer­ent light, or, at least, pub­lish those sto­ries that show that Ude­cott's prime ac­cusers are not ex­act­ly com­ing up with clean hands?

Why, then, didn't Ude­cott's high-priced at­tor­neys protest of­fi­cial­ly dur­ing the hear­ings?

Good ques­tion! I don't know. Why don't you ask them?

Is all of this a slur against Pro­fes­sor John Uff, a high­ly-re­spect­ed in­ter­na­tion­al pro­fes­sion­al?

It is ir­rel­e­vant to the case I am mak­ing as to whether or not Uff has a good rep­u­ta­tion. I am deal­ing with how he con­duct­ed this en­quiry. And, hav­ing re­viewed a fair amount of the ev­i­dence, I am sat­is­fied that he has some se­ri­ous ques­tions to an­swer. I have seen too much to be san­guine about the fair­ness of this en­quiry. ���

Jus­tice de­layed is jus­tice de­nied. Isn't this rel­e­vant to this mat­ter?

Ab­solute­ly! But–and it is a big but–it is al­so a cor­ner­stone of our ju­di­cial sys­tem that every per­son (even the men who mur­dered my cousin!) is en­ti­tled to a fair tri­al or hear­ing. One of the bedrock prin­ci­ples of our jus­tice sys­tem is that it is bet­ter for ten guilty men to go free than for one in­no­cent man to be hanged.

Sure­ly, you are not say­ing there was no wrong­do­ing at Ude­cott.

I am not in a po­si­tion to make a de­ter­mi­na­tion of guilt or in­no­cence. What I am com­plain­ing about is the un­fair­ness of how this en­quiry has not on­ly been con­duct­ed, but the emo­tion­al, spec­u­la­tive and some­times dem­a­gog­ic way in which it has been con­duct­ed in the pub­lic dis­course.

Crit­ics say Ude­cott is a rogue ele­phant. What are your views?

There are very se­ri­ous ques­tions that need to be an­swered that have not, to date, been an­swered sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly. But if the hear­ings are not fair, then un­for­tu­nate­ly, every­thing gets mud­died.

Should Ude­cott be giv­en State con­tracts while it is un­der probe?

I could an­swer that ques­tion ei­ther way. Yes, be­cause no­body has been found guilty of any­thing and the hear­ings have not been fair. No, be­cause even though the hear­ings have not been fair, there are very se­ri­ous ques­tions to an­swer on the part of Ude­cott. And here again a fair-mind­ed per­son would un­der­stand why it is im­por­tant for an en­quiry such as this to be con­duct­ed ab­solute­ly fair­ly from the be­gin­ning.

Should Com­mis­sion­ers Is­rael Khan and Ken­neth Sir­ju have re­signed?

One of the mat­ters the Com­mis­sion was sup­posed to probe was the col­lapse of the scaf­fold­ing a few years ago at the Cus­toms build­ing, where a num­ber of work­ers were in­jured. Short­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent, Mr Sir­ju was com­mis­sioned by the con­trac­tor, NH In­ter­na­tion­al, to write an ex­pert re­port for the ben­e­fit of NH. Would you like for me to be sit­ting in judge­ment of your ac­tions where I was en­gaged to give an opin­ion on a mat­ter in which you are now in dis­pute with the per­son who paid me? As for Is­rael Khan, his so-called ro­bust ques­tion­ing was to­tal­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate for a per­son sit­ting in a ju­di­cial or qua­si-ju­di­cial ca­pac­i­ty.

What are your views on the non-gazetting of the Com­mis­sion?

To­tal in­com­pe­tence on some­body's part! Whose? I don't know. But here again, we are see­ing the con­se­quences of a bi­ased or in­com­pe­tent me­dia. If this was, say, the Unit­ed States, don't you think the me­dia would have found out and re­port­ed who was to blame? And don't come to with me with the Lucky probe. The me­dia abroad does not wait for the me­dia to spoon-feed them with in­for­ma­tion.

Should the Ude­cott Board of Di­rec­tors be re­moved?

A loaded ques­tion! Yes, if they are guilty, and, no, if they are not. But if the Com­mis­sion has not been fair to Ude­cott, should we still hang them? Would that be fair?

How do you feel about Michael An­nisette serv­ing both as a Ude­cott Di­rec­tor and an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor?

From day one, I have been crit­i­cal of his ap­point­ment as an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor.�I sim­ply do not ac­cept that he em­bod­ies the prin­ci­ples of what an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor should be. Fur­ther, I do not ac­cept that a per­son can be an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor and a mem­ber of State Board. From my per­spec­tive, it is wrong. I blame Pres­i­dent Max Richards for this.

Do you have con­fi­dence that the Com­mis­sion's re­port would be made pub­lic with­out be­ing sani­tised?

The pub­li­ca­tion of a de­fec­tive re­port can have se­ri­ous le­gal con­se­quences.

For ex­am­ple, as­sum­ing that the re­port high­lights wrong­do­ing on the part of some per­son or per­sons and the court holds that per­son or per­sons has not been treat­ed fair­ly by the Com­mis­sion, do you re­alise the per­son could es­cape Scot free? For ex­am­ple, look at the Row­ley mat­ter with the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. Do you re­alise that Dr Row­ley's case was that the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion was wrong to re­fer the crim­i­nal ac­cu­sa­tions that were be­ing made against him to the DPP, with­out him first be­ing al­lowed to be heard? The court agreed that Row­ley was right. The ques­tion of whether he was guilty of any­thing has nev­er been de­ter­mined. At least, if it has, it has not been wide­ly re­port­ed. In oth­er words, the guilt or in­no­cence of Dr Row­ley has nev­er been de­ter­mined. Is this a good thing?