Fran­cis Joseph

Any plans the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) had of ap­peal­ing ur­gent­ly, last Fri­day's judg­ment, has been thrown in lim­bo, by the shock res­ig­na­tion of its ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, Calder Hart. Hours af­ter the judg­ment on Fri­day, both in-house and ex­ter­nal at­tor­neys for Ude­cott were ea­ger to go to the Court of Ap­peal to get a stay of Prof John Uff hand­ing in his re­port to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards this week. But on Sat­ur­day, Hart, who had been un­der two years of con­stant pres­sure, re­signed, not on­ly as ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Ude­cott, but as chair­man of four oth­er state boards.

Hart, his wife Sher­rine, and daugh­ter Jean, then flew out to Mi­a­mi on Sat­ur­day, for what a close friend said was a short vis­it "to re­lieve him­self from all the re­cent pres­sures." The oth­er mem­bers of the Ude­cott board have not met, so no in­struc­tions were giv­en to their at­tor­neys to go to the Court of Ap­peal. The ur­gent ap­pli­ca­tion to stay de­liv­ery of the re­port will not hap­pen to­day, as Ude­cott of­fi­cials are still try­ing to un­der­stand the round­about de­ci­sion tak­en by Hart to leave im­me­di­ate­ly. There were un­con­firmed re­ports yes­ter­day that Uff was fly­ing in to present the re­port to the Pres­i­dent, but no one was able to con­firm this.

The re­port was ex­pect­ed on two pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions, the last be­ing Feb­ru­ary 28, but be­cause of the court case, there was an un­der­tak­ing that it would not be hand­ed over un­til judg­ment was giv­en. On Fri­day, Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er, pre­sid­ing in Port-of-Spain High Court, dis­missed Ude­cott's ju­di­cial re­view in which the state com­pa­ny claimed that the Uff Com­mis­sion­ers were bi­ased to­wards Ude­cott and Hart. In her 142-page judg­ment, Dean-Ar­mor­er or­dered that the fi­nal re­port be hand­ed in by the oth­er two of the four com­mis­sion­ers –Uff and Desmond Thorn­hill.

Ude­cott, how­ev­er, was able to get an or­der from the court to say that the de­ci­sion of the com­mis­sion­ers to re­ceive a mem­o­ran­dum pre­pared by for­mer com­mis­sion­er, Ken­neth Sir­ju, and to an­nex that re­port to the com­mis­sion of en­quiry's re­port, was il­le­gal, null and void. Dean-Ar­mor­er grant­ed an or­der of cer­tio­rari to quash the de­ci­sion of the com­mis­sion­ers to re­ceive such an ex­tra­ne­ous mem­o­ran­dum and an­nex it to the com­mis­sion of en­quiry's re­port. She al­so or­dered Ude­cott to pay 7/8ths of the costs to the Uff Com­mis­sion, de­fen­dants in the mat­ter.

Two com­mis­sion­ers, Ken­neth Sir­ju and Is­rael Khan, SC, re­signed last year from the com­mis­sion, so they won't be part of the fi­nal re­port.