?Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Emi­ly Dick-Forde says the un­re­lent­ing bom­bard­ment and com­ments by "op­po­si­tion­al per­son­al­i­ties" on the Calder Hart/Ude­cott con­tro­ver­sy are in­tend­ed to pre-empt the find­ings of the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Ude­cott and the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor. She said so in a state­ment yes­ter­day, one day af­ter she told re­porters the na­tion should be ashamed for hound­ing for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) Calder Hart from of­fice. Hart re­signed on Sat­ur­day and left the coun­try af­ter doc­u­ments al­leg­ing he had fam­i­ly ties with two of­fi­cials of the con­struc­tion firm Sun­way, which was giv­en a $368.9 mil­lion con­tract by Ude­cott to con­struct the Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­ers in Port-of-Spain. Dick-Forde said: "The clear in­ten­tion is to spread alarm among the na­tion and to have a man and his fam­i­ly, the di­rec­tors of an or­gan­i­sa­tion, as well as the Gov­ern­ment, all brand­ed as cor­rupt and even crim­i­nal, with no le­gal process to sup­port such state­ments."

She added: "The na­tion's soul is af­fect­ed by those bold in­fringe­ments on a per­son's right to fair­ness in mat­ters of this na­ture. "What we are wit­ness­ing to­day vi­o­lates the pro­ce­dures es­tab­lished in the Con­sti­tu­tion to con­duct such in­ves­ti­ga­tions and de­scends in­to a vig­i­lante-style ap­proach with a pre­tence at speak­ing for the or­di­nary peo­ple." Dick-Forde said the peo­ple of T&T "should not seek to pre-empt and eclipse the le­gal chan­nels for deal­ing with is­sues un­der the law. "Such ac­tions ap­pear to have the sole ob­jec­tive of trig­ger­ing some abor­tion of the tenure of the du­ly-elect­ed Gov­ern­ment." She said now was not the time for cel­e­bra­tion but "deep re­flec­tion and con­tem­pla­tion at what is hap­pen­ing in this sit­u­a­tion and even in the mat­ter of the free­dom of as­so­ci­a­tion is­sues as well. "The soul of our na­tion is at stake in this mat­ter," she added.