Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

?One of Calder Hart's sons is de­fend­ing his fa­ther against ac­cu­sa­tions that he fled Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ter ten­der­ing his res­ig­na­tion from the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott).

Yes­ter­day, Chase Hart said:

"He is not in the coun­try, and there is no one-way tick­et. There is a two-way tick­et and he will be com­ing back. He will be back short­ly." Chase said there was "a lit­tle girl in­volved who has heard every­thing un­der the sun about her fa­ther" and that it was "thought that var­i­ous things were go­ing to play out, so it was bet­ter to get away for a while and let the is­sues sort of deal with them­selves."

Hart, his wife Sher­rine, and their daugh­ter, Jean, de­part­ed to Flori­da on Sat­ur­day af­ter Hart re­signed from Ude­cott and five oth­er state boards. Chase said: "This thing has gone as far as hit­ting our fam­i­ly in Cana­da and even they heard about it." He stressed that it was er­ro­neous to re­port that his Cana­di­an-born fa­ther re­turned to Cana­da. "It is not Cana­da that he has gone to," Chase said. "I joke with peo­ple that he has not re­al­ly been Cana­di­an since he left 25 years ago. He is Trinida­di­an. He is a dual cit­i­zen, yes, but no one in Cana­da thinks of him as Cana­di­an."