Fran­cis Joseph

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has promised she will pub­li­cise the unedit­ed Uff Re­port when her Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) par­ty gets in­to gov­ern­ment, should Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning fail to do so. �.

Yes­ter­day, Pro­fes­sor John Uff de­liv­ered the re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Ude­cott and the con­struc­tion sec­tor to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards at Pres­i­dent's House. The na­tion, she said, had been wait­ing for the re­port since the rev­e­la­tions made dur­ing the pub­lic hear­ings which un­earthed ev­i­dence of what ap­pears to be cor­rup­tion in the high­est of­fices of Ude­cott.�Re­cent re­ports of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the ac­tions of for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart and the Prime Min­is­ter's stead­fast, open and vo­cal sup­port of Mr Hart dur­ing the in­quiry, had made the pub­lic sen­si­tive to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a cov­er-up, Per­sad-Bisses­sar added.

The UNC po­lit­i­cal leader said the Prime Min­is­ter used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­dress the Sen­ate yes­ter­day to re­cy­cle old promis­es of new health fa­cil­i­ties, "but then ad­vised that these will be man­aged by Ude­cott, the same com­pa­ny which con­tin­ues to op­er­ate un­der a haze of un­cer­tain­ty, the stain of cor­rup­tion and the fail­ure to es­tab­lish prop­er pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures, and which was the sub­ject of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry. "Where is he go­ing to find the funds to fi­nance his promis­es? Who is he fool­ing?" she asked. Per­sad-Bisses­sar added: "Once more these ac­tions are il­log­i­cal, in­sen­si­tive and in­ap­pro­pri­ate. Dur­ing the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry, the PM open­ly sup­port­ed Calder Hart whose ac­tions while in of­fice were be­ing re­viewed by the com­mis­sion.

"Now in the face of the re­port, the Prime Min­is­ter shows open dis­re­gard and dis­dain by award­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in con­tracts to Ude­cott, with­out the ben­e­fit of the find­ings of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry." Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Prime Min­is­ter ap­pears to be us­ing his of­fice to heap con­tempt up­on con­tempt on the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the le­gal process. "I call on the Prime Min­is­ter to back off. His ac­tions and words do not match, while say­ing 'let the law takes it course'�and 'no­body is above the law,' the Prime Min­is­ter seems in­clined to ig­nore the�find­ings of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry even be­fore know­ing what they are." She added: "I chal­lenge the Prime Min­is­ter to lay the Uff Com­mis­sion Re­port in the Par­lia­ment now.

"Stop hid­ing be­hind red her­rings and ma­m­aguy. I promise the na­tion that if the Prime Min­is­ter does not lay the�re­port forth­with, I will en­sure the re­port of the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry 2010 will be placed in the pub­lic do­main when my par­ty gets in­to gov­ern­ment."