Gail Alexan­der

"Po­lit­i­cal ta­ban­ca!" That's how Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day dubbed the ac­tions of her pre­de­ces­sor Bas­deo Pan­day and Cou­va South MP Kelvin Ram­nath af­ter both stymied Op­po­si­tion ef­forts to ob­tain Par­lia­men­tary de­bate on UNC's call for the re­moval of Ude­cott head Calder Hart. "It is a sad day for a great man to reach this im­passe," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. "It's a sad day for Op­po­si­tion pol­i­tics when the PNM can de­pend on Mr Pan­day and Ram­nath to res­cue them...and save the Hart or Mr Man­ning be­cause the is­sue would have had wide ex­po­sure in the high­est fo­rum in the land." De­bate on the Hart is­sue was de­feat­ed af­ter Pan­day and Ram­nath failed to stand up and be count­ed among the num­ber of Op­po­si­tion MPs who at­tempt­ed to ob­tain de­bate on the mat­ter. The is­sue un­fold­ed dur­ing yes­ter­day's House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives af­ter Ram­nath took up his new seat on the Op­po­si­tion back­bench.

At the start of the ses­sion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar at­tempt­ed to ob­tain de­bate re­gard­ing the UNC's call for the re­vo­ca­tion of the ap­point­ment of Hart from Ude­cott and oth­er state en­ter­pris­es. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that on Thurs­day, "in­con­tro­vert­ible doc­u­ment ev­i­dence" was placed in the pub­lic do­main. She said this al­leged­ly con­firmed fam­i­ly re­la­tion­ships of Hart to two peo­ple in which the own­er­ship and con­trol of CH De­vel­op­ment was vest­ed at the time when Ude­cott award­ed it the con­tract for the con­struc­tion of the $368.9 mil­lion Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er to CH De­vel­op­ment. Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed that this was at a price which was more than $60 mil­lion high­er than that of the low­est bid­der. She claimed Hart failed to com­ply with sec­tions of the In­tegri­ty Act per­tain­ing to con­flict of in­ter­est in the award of the Le­gal Af­fairs con­tract, "since Hart did not de­clare such in­ter­est nor dis­qual­i­fy him­self from the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the sit­u­a­tion has served to un­der­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in Hart as Ude­cott chair­man and in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Ude­cott. Speak­er Baren­dra Sinanan who agreed to al­low de­bate on the is­sue at the end of the sit­ting, asked if all MPs agreed. When Sinanan re­ceived a mixed re­sponse–"Nos" from the PNM side and "Yes" from the UNC–he called for MPs who want­ed the de­bate to stand up. Sinanan said the sup­port of 11 MPs was nec­es­sary. How­ev­er, al­though there were 11 UNC MPs in the Par­lia­ment, on­ly nine stood up and Pan­day and Ram­nath re­mained seat­ed. Those who stood were Jack Warn­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Roodal Mooni­lal, Tim Gopeesingh, Chan­dresh Shar­ma, Vas­ant Bharath, Sub­has Pan­day (Pan­day se­nior's broth­er), Har­ry Par­tap and Win­ston Pe­ters. MPs Mick­ela Pan­day and Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj were late. MP Nizam Baksh was ab­sent and Hamza Rafeeq is due home from An­tigua this week­end.

Pan­day lat­er told re­porters he was not con­sult­ed on the is­sue and did not want to be com­mit­ted to some­thing he did not know about. He said: "I didn't know what she was go­ing to say, sup­posed it end­ed up be­ing state­ment which I dis­ap­prove of... sure­ly I de­serve to be con­sult­ed...I'm very con­cerned about the is­sue, but I'm not go­ing to be made a fool of." Pan­day said he pre­ferred that Per­sad-Bisses­sar would have "reached out" and told him what she was go­ing to say. He said pre­vi­ous UNC cau­cus­es pre­pared like that. On the view that his ac­tion em­bar­rassed the Op­po­si­tion, Pan­day said, "No, this in­di­cates I will not be treat­ed like a child." Asked about the pub­lic's in­ter­est, Pan­day said: "What pub­lic in­ter­est. I'm a MP and have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and I can­not back up state­ments I know noth­ing of." Pan­day said he was not putting his own in­ter­est above the pub­lic in­ter­est.

"My in­ter­est is very im­por­tant...I have to live with my­self," he added. He said he trust­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­ci­sion as a leader. But, he said, he has not spo­ken to Per­sad-Bisses­sar since be­fore the UNC elec­tion. He said it was not true that she tried to call him. At a sub­se­quent brief­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar flanked by sev­en MPs–ex­clud­ing Sub­has Pan­day–said the two MPs' ac­tion de­nied the pop­u­la­tion the op­por­tu­ni­ty of hav­ing the Gov­ern­ment an­swer im­por­tant ques­tions on the Hart is­sue. She said she would re­file the call for Hart's re­moval with the Par­lia­ment on Mon­day. It will qual­i­fy for de­bate next Fri­day.