Yvonne Webb

Deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has is­sued a call to crick­et­ing icon Bri­an Lara to re­move his name from the ill-fat­ed sta­di­um named af­ter him in Tarou­ba.

As the UNC launched its 2010 elec­tion cam­paign in Mara­bel­la on Mon­day night, Mooni­lal re­mind­ed the au­di­ence that the Uff Com­mis­sion has rec­om­mend­ed a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the award of five con­tracts in­to the sta­di­um, lo­cat­ed a stone's throw from where the meet­ing was held.

The sta­di­um which was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to cost $360 mil­lion, in time for the ICC World Cup in 2007, now stands in­com­plete at more than $800 mil­lion. There are moves to have it opened be­fore the end of the month.

"Tonight we call up­on this leg­endary crick­eter to please, enough is enough, take your name away from that sta­di­um of shame," Mooni­lal said.

Speak­ing on a plat­form which in­clud­ed UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as well as TOP leader Ash­worth Jack, Mooni­lal re­called Lara's il­lus­tri­ous ca­reer in the sport of crick­et. "He is an icon in the Com­mon­wealth and his name should not be as­so­ci­at­ed with that scan­dal and, with what will be­come a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion for years to come in this coun­try," Mooni­lal said.

Re­fer­ring to the Chancery Lane Com­plex in San Fer­nan­do which the Uff Com­mis­sion said has a cost over­run of $161 mil­lion, Mooni­lal said be­cause the na­tion's re­sources were chan­neled in­to a num­ber of ques­tion­able projects, the hos­pi­tals had no beds, ra­di­og­ra­phers and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als were not be­ing ad­e­quate­ly paid, the Po­lice Ser­vice was with­out cars and schools with­out com­put­ers. He said the ques­tions sur­round­ing the op­er­a­tion of Ude­cott was the pri­ma­ry cause of the Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion col­laps­ing in 24 months.

Mooni­lal dis­missed Man­ning's rea­son that he want­ed to pre­vent elect­ed mem­bers from slan­der­ing him (Man­ning) dur­ing a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion the UNC had filed for de­bate against him on the same day the Par­lia­ment was dis­solved. "He said he 'fraid slan­der...He said that we would go to the Par­lia­ment and slan­der him, but there are stand­ing or­ders in the House which pre­vents MPs from slan­der­ing peo­ple," Mooni­lal said. "The House has rules and reg­u­la­tions that pre­vent that. "Yet it is the same Man­ning who stood up in the Par­lia­ment and said that Carl Khan, the for­mer hus­band of the wife of for­mer Ude­cott chair­man Calder Hart, is a jilt­ed lover."