Calls were be­ing made for Calder Hart to be ex­tra­dit­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ter he fled to Flori­da hours af­ter re­sign­ing from the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd (Ude­cott) and oth­er state boards. Ac­cord­ing to Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) chair­man Jack Warn­er, the Gov­ern­ment and Im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties must en­sure that no per­sons in­volved and im­pli­cat­ed in the re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Ude­cott and the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor were al­lowed "to flee our shores." Warn­er, who is at­tend­ing to Fi­fa busi­ness in Colom­bia, added that ex­tra­di­tion arrange­ments should be ini­ti­at­ed with haste to have such in­di­vid­u­als "brought back to face jus­tice."

He was re­spond­ing to re­ports that Hart, his wife Sher­rine and his daugh­ter Jean took a flight to Flori­da af­ter Hart ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion from Ude­cott and four oth­er state boards. Hart's res­ig­na­tion came less than 24 hours af­ter High Court Judge Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er on Fri­day re­ject­ed re­quests from Hart's lawyers to stop the re­port of the com­mis­sion of en­quiry to be sub­mit­ted. Warn­er called for the re­port to be laid in the Par­lia­ment and for it to be de­bat­ed in "the pub­lic's glare forth­with." He not­ed that the re­port should be de­liv­ered to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to en­sure that the rel­e­vant crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings were ini­ti­at­ed.?The Cana­di­an-born Hart came un­der heavy fire af­ter they were award­ed more than $800 mil­lion in Ude­cott con­tracts to a Malaysian firm linked to at least one of his wife's rel­a­tives.

Warn­er con­demned Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's fail­ure "to nip the cor­rup­tion in the bud" at Ude­cott and called on Man­ning to an­nounce a gen­er­al elec­tion "with­out de­lay." "The Gov­ern­ment must face the elec­torate on this is­sue...The na­tion must be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­cide on this is­sue which has plagued a coun­try in dire need of change," Warn­er said. "The very dis­turb­ing al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion against Ude­cott must be thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed. We (the UNC) al­so call for an ur­gent foren­sic au­dit and in­ves­ti­ga­tion in every project han­dled by Ude­cott and its af­fil­i­ates." He em­pha­sised that each "civic-mind­ed cit­i­zen" called for Hart's res­ig­na­tion since years ago, af­ter al­le­ga­tions of ram­pant cor­rup­tion at Ude­cott start­ed to ap­pear in the pub­lic do­main re­gard­less that the Prime Min­is­ter "paid no heed."

"In fact, PM Man­ning had pub­licly de­fend­ed the Ude­cott chair­man. The will of the peo­ple has fi­nal­ly pre­vailed. Hart's res­ig­na­tion is a vic­to­ry for every cit­i­zen of this coun­try," Warn­er said. Warn­er stressed that Hart's res­ig­na­tion was "not enough" and he re­it­er­at­ed calls for the en­tire Ude­cott board to re­sign. Among the oth­er di­rec­tors in­clud­ed busi­ness­man Dr Kr­ish­na Ba­hadoors­ingh, In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Michael An­nisette, at­tor­ney An­tho­ny Cher­ry and Wen­dell Dot­tin. (KM)