Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, has joined the grow­ing list of per­sons call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­move Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee from her Cab­i­net.

That call comes in the wake of Lee’s re-ar­rest last week on fraud-re­lat­ed mat­ters. Lee was re-charged along­side busi­ness­man Hugh Leong Poi.

How­ev­er, de­spite calls for his res­ig­na­tion, the Hous­ing Min­is­ter says he won’t do so. He al­so re­tained his front bench seat in the Par­lia­ment, close to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, dur­ing last Fri­day’s sit­ting of Par­lia­ment. The Prime Min­is­ter al­so re­cent­ly said Lee will re­main as min­is­ter.

Yes­ter­day, Lal­la fol­lowed up with a sim­i­lar call to for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young the pre­vi­ous day, say­ing the Prime Min­is­ter and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress are set­ting a new, wor­ry­ing and dan­ger­ous stan­dard for the con­duct of T&T’s gov­er­nance af­fairs.

“For the first time ever, we have a Min­is­ter of Gov­ern­ment be­ing charged for a crim­i­nal of­fence and the Prime Min­is­ter has re­fused to re­voke his ap­point­ment and he has re­fused to step away from the of­fice he holds in trust for the peo­ple of T&T,” Lal­la said.

“Are we as a peo­ple (re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion) com­fort­able with this prece­dent? Is that what we in­tend to ac­cept go­ing for­ward?”

Lal­la said the stan­dard prac­tice is for pub­lic ser­vants from the high­est to the low­est (PSs, po­lice of­fi­cers, clerks, etc) who are charged with a crim­i­nal of­fence to be sent on leave pend­ing the com­ple­tion of their crim­i­nal charge.

“Are we say­ing that that prac­tice should end? Should the stan­dard that ap­plies to pub­lic ser­vants not al­so ap­ply to the min­is­ters above them? I sug­gest that this is a prece­dent that we can­not ig­nore, nor ap­prove, for the con­se­quences are too grave for us as a peo­ple and the stan­dard to which we hold those per­sons who hold pub­lic of­fices in trust for us.”

Lal­la added, “The Prime Min­is­ter, as the leader of the Gov­ern­ment, needs to se­ri­ous­ly re­con­sid­er her un­prece­dent­ed po­si­tion on this mat­ter. Is she com­fort­able with a priest con­tin­u­ing to hold on to of­fice if charged with in­ter­fer­ing with mi­nors, or a school prin­ci­pal con­tin­u­ing in of­fice if charged with mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing school funds? And if not, then why should a dif­fer­ent stan­dard ap­ply to one of her min­is­ters charged with us­ing his tax ex­emp­tion to as­sist a friend es­cape hun­dreds of thou­sands in tax­es for the pur­chase of an ul­tra-lux­u­ry Mer­cedes-Benz?”

He said the Prime Min­is­ter was al­so us­ing a skewed ar­gu­ment in her de­fence of Lee.

“Con­trary to the PM’s as­ser­tion on the evening Lee was charged, Lee was nev­er ac­quit­ted be­cause he has nev­er faced a tri­al. One can on­ly be ac­quit­ted af­ter a tri­al. Please think care­ful­ly T&T,” Lal­la said.

Lee is ac­cused of im­prop­er­ly claim­ing tax ex­emp­tions on a Mer­cedes-Benz G63 AMG val­ued over $2 mil­lion im­port­ed in 2019. The of­fences are al­leged to have oc­curred be­tween March 24 and June 8 of that year.

Ac­cord­ing to the charges, Lee, who was then an MP, false­ly claimed own­er­ship of the ve­hi­cle to se­cure tax ex­emp­tions, which in­clud­ed $293,094.02 in Val­ue Added Tax, $298,650 in mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax, and $824,548.62 in cus­toms du­ty.

Min­is­ter Lee is cur­rent­ly on $1 mil­lion bail and has pro­fessed his in­no­cence.