Gail Alexan­der

The 2010-2011 bud­get in­cludes a $13 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for al­leged "friends" of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to probe sev­en projects done by the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley claimed yes­ter­day.

De­liv­er­ing his re­ply to the 2010-2011 bud­get in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Row­ley al­so fired ques­tions in the AG's di­rec­tion on al­leged clients of Ross Ad­ver­tis­ing–which did work for the PP dur­ing elec­tions–and pos­si­ble "pay­back". In a two-and-a-half-hour pre­sen­ta­tion, Row­ley dis­missed the bud­get as "noth­ing new but on­ly clich�s." He said the bud­get, with two sig­nif­i­cant ex­cep­tions, "is a ring­ing en­dorse­ment of vir­tu­al­ly all of the poli­cies as craft­ed and ex­e­cut­ed by the PNM, with a lit­tle tin­ker here and a lit­tle tick­le there." Stat­ing it was the "largest bud­get in his­to­ry," Row­ley added: "It is as pre­ten­tious as it is dis­ap­point­ing... a mish-mash of pe­riph­er­al ad­just­ments of PNM poli­cies." Through­out his pre­sen­ta­tion Row­ley ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of de­ceiv­ing the pop­u­la­tion with state­ments, in­clud­ing about pen­sion hikes and the re­moval of the prop­er­ty tax.

Row­ley said he had not­ed a $13 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion in bud­get doc­u­ments for a team of in­ves­ti­ga­tors ap­point­ed by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to un­der­take an au­dit in­to the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, Petrotrin, E-Teck, the Sports Com­pa­ny, T&TEC, the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal and the fast fer­ry. Row­ley al­leged: "We are ad­vised that this team, to the man, are all very close friends and as­so­ciates of the Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. Five of which are lawyers, two hold briefs for him in the courts, now that he is out of pri­vate prac­tice. "In fact, I am ad­vised, that they op­er­ate out of and from the of­fice of his pri­vate prac­tice. One is his men­tor, from whom he sought a cost­ly le­gal opin­ion when there was ab­solute­ly no need for such in a mat­ter that had every­thing to do with "ethics" and noth­ing to do with law." Row­ley al­leged.

"Yet an­oth­er is a close as­so­ciate of his men­tor and al­so a close as­so­ciate of the Queen's Coun­sel on the team. One big hap­py le­gal fam­i­ly...all broth­ers-in-law," he said. Row­ley queried why there were most­ly lawyers on the team and why all are "demon­stra­bly close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the AG. He al­so queried the cri­te­ri­on used for their se­lec­tion and their track record in this type of work. Row­ley said: "They are not a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry! They are not po­lice of­fi­cers! They are not from the of­fice of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al! "We are ad­vised that this 'friend-friend' team wrote a let­ter to one of the en­ter­pris­es that is a sub­ject of their at­ten­tion and de­mand­ed a list of all the con­tracts en­tered in­to by that en­ter­prise for the past five years.

"This is not on­ly oner­ous and bur­den­some but be­cause they have no known terms of ref­er­ence, the en­ter­prise is at a loss to know ex­act­ly what they want." Row­ley said the state en­ter­prise has queried the le­gal ba­sis or au­thor­i­ty on which the team is seek­ing in­for­ma­tion. He added: "The process is there­fore stymied and off to a poor and sor­ry start. So his friends have ac­cess to $13 mil­lion in cir­cum­stances where the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is now on record as say­ing that there is no lim­it to what he is pre­pared to pay for this as­sign­ment." Row­ley said there would be no sworn tes­ti­mo­ny by per­sons speak­ing to the "A-Team". "You would wind up with slan­der and in­nu­en­does in a re­port and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al would lay this in Par­lia­ment be­hind the se­cure cloak of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege. Per­sons af­fect­ed would have no op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­tect them­selves," Row­ley said.

He added: "Even if this 'A-Team' gets to the point where they con­sid­er that there is suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence in any par­tic­u­lar case to pros­e­cute some­one, the mat­ter would then be re­ferred to the po­lice who would have no choice but to be­gin an in­ves­ti­ga­tion all over again." Row­ley al­so raised ques­tions on an­oth­er is­sue con­cern­ing the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. Not­ing that Ross Ad­ver­tis­ing had tak­en re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for a mis­print re­gard­ing a PP ad on the pen­sion is­sue, Row­ley called on Ross Ad­ver­tis­ing to an­swer on an­oth­er mat­ter. He chal­lenged the com­pa­ny to say what they did "for the mil­lions they re­ceived from Roy­al Cas­tle (in­clud­ing the last cheque for $2.5 mil­lion) which they re­ceived one week be­fore elec­tion day," Row­ley said.

He al­leged: "I am sure they will have no dif­fi­cul­ty telling the coun­try who for­ward­ed and signed the in­struc­tions to the bank to pay them that mon­ey and whether such per­sons need the help of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in any le­gal mat­ter and whether they will ac­cept any re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the cu­ri­ous be­hav­iour of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in a cer­tain mat­ter of in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est." Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter, Row­ley said he had been a Par­lia­men­tar­i­an for very long time and was not known to make ir­re­spon­si­ble state­ments. He said: "If they want to re­fute it they can do so–I on­ly ask the ques­tions. I'm wait­ing for an­swers," Row­ley said the pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dure for Gov­ern­ment's lap­top plan made him very un­easy. He said: "The fact that the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing out of its way to com­fort the pop­u­la­tion that there is no lo­cal agent in­volve­ment and that no lo­cal agent for a pop­u­lar brand like HP has not been iden­ti­fied tells me Gov­ern­ment is not com­ing clean on this.

"The more the min­is­ter tries to de­fend the process the more the un­ease grows. He's a brave man to have spo­ken so de­fin­i­tive­ly about a process from which he should have op­er­at­ed at arms length." Con­cerned about the pur­chase be­ing done with HP Latin Amer­i­ca af­ter oth­er bribery and in­flu­enc­ing is­sues dogged HP's US and Russ­ian arms, Row­ley added: "Mr Speak­er, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter has a lap­top for you–he thinks you are a duncey head first for­mer."