Malis­sa Lara

"The mes­sage is clear: You can do what you want, be­cause no one is ever held ac­count­able in T&T," says Vic­tor Hart, Chair­man of T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute. Hart and Ch­agua­nas West MP, Jack Warn­er, both ex­pressed grave con­cerns over the lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy re­gard­ing the in­quiry.

"I find it pass­ing strange that, where­as last Thurs­day's Cab­i­net meet­ing di­rect­ed the line min­is­ters to have TSTT and PTSC with­draw pe­ti­tions be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court to have Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers' Union and Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers' Union de­cer­ti­fied, Cab­i­net did not di­rect Ude­cott's line min­is­ter to in­struct Ude­cott to with­draw its le­gal chal­lenges to the in­quiry, de­spite calls by many per­sons to do so," Hart added.

"The mes­sage is clear: Dif­fer­ent strokes for dif­fer­ent folks."

Hart said the im­pli­ca­tions for the coun­try of Jus­tice Dean-Ar­mor­er's de­ci­sion were very se­ri­ous. "We must now wait sev­er­al more months for the com­mis­sion­ers' ex­pect­ed rec­om­men­da­tions on the re­form of pub­lic sec­tor pro­cure­ment, while bil­lions of dol­lars con­tin­ue to be spent on mega-projects that are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing time and cost over­runs with­out the checks and bal­ances that min­imise cor­rup­tion. "We must al­so wait for their rec­om­men­da­tions on the re­form of the con­struc­tion sec­tor.

"Per­sons in pub­lic life, against whom se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions were made at the in­quiry, some of which the com­mis­sion­ers might rec­om­mend for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion, will con­tin­ue in their posts and have de­layed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to clear their names or to be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions," he added. Ac­cord­ing to Hart, the peo­ple of T&T will be the losers, af­ter so much is be­ing spent.

Civ­il so­ci­ety, he said, should take note and say: "Enough is enough."

'We want an­swers'

Mean­while, Warn­er was con­cerned that many se­ri­ous ques­tions con­tin­ued to tor­ment the minds of cit­i­zens re­gard­ing the con­duct of Ude­cott of­fi­cials. The pub­lic, he said, need­ed an­swers.

"The is­sues per­tain­ing to cor­rup­tion, mis­con­duct in of­fice and oth­er malfea­sance must be ven­ti­lat­ed. "The games be­ing played by the gov­ern­ment of my coun­try and Ude­cott, re­gard­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in the han­dling of bil­lions of dol­lars by the state com­pa­ny, must come to an end.

"It is clear from the con­duct of the var­i­ous par­ties that the gov­ern­ment and cer­tain of­fi­cials of Ude­cott are ei­ther col­lab­o­rat­ing or work­ing sep­a­rate­ly to de­ny the pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy, to cov­er up mis­deal­ing and to al­low those in­volved in cor­rup­tion to es­cape the law of my coun­try." Warn­er said it was a most scan­dalous state of af­fairs, and in­creased the sus­pi­cion and the need for a prop­er foren­sic probe in­to Ude­cott. He said his in­ter­na­tion­al col­leagues all sug­gest­ed to him that "T&T and I will be cry­ing for a long time to come."