Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

?For­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj has warned that noth­ing will in­tim­i­date him from ini­ti­at­ing le­gal ac­tion against Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning for aban­don­ing the in­ter­ests of the pub­lic. This comes af­ter al­le­ga­tions that the Prime Min­is­ter was act­ing in col­lu­sion to de­rail in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to cor­rup­tion at the State-owned Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (Ude­cott). "I have a du­ty and I will dis­charge my du­ty, and Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning knows that I am not afraid to dis­charge my du­ty, and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (John Je­re­mie) should know that I know the func­tions of an at­tor­ney gen­er­al.�I may not be as good as him, but I know the func­tions of an at­tor­ney gen­er­al," Ma­haraj said.

"This is not an is­sue that peo­ple should be afraid of. Peo­ple have a du­ty to fight. This is bil­lions of dol­lars be­ing stolen from the pock­ets of the poor peo­ple in this coun­try, who need that mon­ey for pen­sion, health­care and every­thing else. This is in­jus­tice." Ma­haraj was speak­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the Ro­tun­da of the Red House on Aber­crom­by Street in Port of Spain. He joined in the out­rage against de­ci­sions to stall the re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Ude­cott and the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor. "I have a du­ty to pro­tect the pub­lic in­ter­est, and as long as blood flows through my veins, what­ev­er the con­se­quences may be, I am pre­pared to face (them) in or­der to en­sure that this pub­lic wrong, which is con­tin­u­ing against the pub­lic, must be stopped," he said.

"It has al­ways been my po­si­tion, that whether you hold the po­si­tion of prime min­is­ter, min­is­ter, at­tor­ney gen­er­al or whichev­er po­si­tion you hold, if you be­tray the trust of the peo­ple to be cor­rupt and to use the funds of the pub­lic to en­rich your­self and to de­ny the pop­u­la­tion of what is due to them, that is the most se­ri­ous crime against hu­man­i­ty." With more than 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the le­gal pro­fes­sion, Ma­haraj de­mand­ed that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in­ter­vene to­day and in­struct Ude­cott to with­draw its ap­pli­ca­tion for ju­di­cial re­view in­to the pro­ceed­ings of the com­mis­sion. "I would await the re­sponse and ac­tion of the Gov­ern­ment," Ma­haraj said. "They have a du­ty to do that, and if they do not do that, then you would hear what I would do, but I am giv­ing them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to (do it).

"I shall take every step to pro­tect the pub­lic in­ter­est in this mat­ter if the Prime Min­is­ter and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al con­tin­ue to ig­nore the pub­lic in­ter­est." He said that con­sid­er­a­tion was be­ing giv­en to so­lic­it­ing the as­sis­tance of the Unit­ed Na­tions to en­gage in le­gal pro­ceed­ings to tack­le what he de­scribed as "a case of cor­rup­tion in­ter­wo­ven with gov­er­nance and the pol­i­tics of gov­er­nance." He said that it would cre­ate what he re­ferred to as "an in­ter­na­tion­al sit­u­a­tion where the en­tire world would know that we are host­ing a Com­mon­wealth Prime Min­is­ters' Con­fer­ence to pro­mote the prin­ci­ples of good gov­er­nance to fight cor­rup­tion in pub­lic of­fice, but the Prime min­is­ter who is host­ing that con­fer­ence is al­low­ing a state-run cor­po­ra­tion to pre­vent an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion of bil­lions of dol­lars."