Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Diego Mar­tin West MP Dr Kei­th Row­ley says it is clear that Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning "has not giv­en up in his ex­pec­ta­tion that he" would "even­tu­al­ly suc­ceed in dam­ag­ing" Row­ley. "The Prime Min­is­ter has sent to that Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (in­ves­ti­gat­ing Ude­cott and the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor) two re­vi­sions in terms of ref­er­ence to (the hous­ing projects at) Cleaver Heights, that cost mil­lions of dol­lars to pur­sue...We have not had the out­come of that yet," Row­ley said. "So clear­ly he (Man­ning) is ex­pect­ing that some­thing will come of that. He is ex­pect­ing that some­thing will come of it...He has not giv­en up on what his orig­i­nal in­ten­tion was," he said �

Row­ley said yes­ter­day af­ter­noon that he be­lieved that Man­ning held hope that ev­i­dence would ap­pear in the short term to tar­nish Row­ley.

Row­ley was re­spond­ing to state­ments Man­ning made at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day morn­ing, which dis­missed sug­ges­tions that Row­ley was "ex­on­er­at­ed" about his con­cerns of cor­rup­tion oc­cur­ring at the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott). Man­ning said: "One has to wait the evening in or­der to de­ter­mine how splen­did the day has been...It is not evening yet." Both Man­ning and Row­ley are mem­bers of the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). Man­ning, who was Row­ley's po­lit­i­cal leader, fired Row­ley from the Cab­i­net af­ter he raised con­cerns about Ude­cott's op­er­a­tions. Row­ley not­ed that Man­ning "did not say any­thing that was any dif­fer­ent" than what he had said in the past about Ude­cott and its for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, Calder Hart, who was the sub­ject of a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­lat­ed to cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions.

"What's new? He (Man­ning) has said noth­ing new. He has pro­vid­ed Calder Hart with pro­tec­tion, de­fence and praise all along and that is what has got­ten a lot of the peo­ple in the coun­try an­gry. Re­gret­tably, to­day (Fri­day) was no dif­fer­ent," Row­ley said. "He (Man­ning) did not say any­thing that was new ex­cept that I took com­fort in the fact that what­ev­er has been said and done in this coun­try and all these is­sues, a sub­stan­tial amount of it was done in full pub­lic view and that means that every cit­i­zen can come to their own con­clu­sion as to what the truth is. What the re­al­i­ty is." Row­ley stressed that "we should wait and see what comes out of" the Ude­cott Com­mis­sion of En­quiry be­cause "the con­text on which" the Prime Min­is­ter dis­missed sug­ges­tions that Row­ley should be "ex­on­er­at­ed" was hinged on the com­mis­sion of en­quiry.

"A sig­nif­i­cant ef­fort has been made by the Prime Min­is­ter and his as­so­ciates to dam­age me pub­licly. It was first done though the in­ex­plic­a­ble con­duct of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. That failed spec­tac­u­lar­ly," Row­ley said. "When that failed, the Prime Min­is­ter him­self took it per­son­al­ly to take up the is­sue and go to the Par­lia­ment. That is where the $10 mil­lion came in." Man­ning ap­peared to call in­to ques­tion Row­ley's char­ac­ter af­ter he al­leged that $10 mil­lion was miss­ing from the Cleaver Heights hous­ing project, which feel un­der Row­ley's held min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio at the time. "Sub­se­quent to that, there was this de­bate in the Cab­i­net about my char­ac­ter and my con­duct. That is the fa­mous rag­ing bull," Row­ley said. Last year, Man­ning used a de­bate in the Par­lia­ment to launch a char­ac­ter at­tack on Row­ley, whom he re­ferred to as a "rag­ing bull."

Row­ley said: "Clear­ly, the Prime Min­is­ter has not giv­en up in his ex­pec­ta­tion that he will even­tu­al­ly suc­ceed in dam­ag­ing me. So that state­ment is to be tak­en in that con­text. He still hopes that they still have an out­stand­ing mat­ter as far as I know. "There may be more. But the one I know about is the Cleaver Heights one, which again, as I said, is in the pub­lic do­main and an in­quiry was launched," he said.