Senior Reporter
rhondor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt
The Opposition United National Congress (UNC) will wait until today to decide if to go ahead with legal action regarding the amendment of the Procurement Act.
The UNC, which is currently contemplating petitioning the court, said it will be holding its hand to hear if the matter will be addressed by Finance Minister Colm Imbert today at a press briefing to be held at 9 am.
Imbert has called a media conference to discuss finance-related matters.
On Sunday, MP Saddam Hosein called out Imbert for an explanation on a three-month Order which exempts from the procurement law, the provision of services for events associated with visits by foreign dignitaries—and which Hosein claims is illegal since it lacks Parliamentary approval.
Speaking with the Guardian Media during a joint walkabout in the Barataria area yesterday with the National Transformation Alliance (NTA), Barataria/San Juan MP Hosein said, “We are waiting on Minister Imbert to really give us an answer as to why he didn’t come to Parliament for that Order to be approved where he has totally exempted all expenditure for that Caricom Summit.
“We would have remembered the two-day Crime Symposium to tell everybody that crime is not the PNM problem, it’s that it is a health emergency and that cost us the taxpayers $3.4 million.”
Hosein added, “This was a five-day Summit and it might cross five, six, seven, eight million, ten million, 20 million, we don’t know, but Imbert needs to come and give us the answers now. That Order that he published on the 29th of June is absolutely illegal.”
He explained that the law is very clear.
“Minister Imbert, if he wanted to exempt those services from the Procurement Act he had to come to the Parliament. I see that he has a press conference tomorrow (Tuesday), so I await to hear what Minister Imbert has to say about this issue.
“He will be disrespecting the Parliament and he will be disrespecting the people of T&T if he fails to address this issue because this is not the Balisier fund that they’re spending. This is the Treasury that belongs to the people of T&T,” Hosein said.
“If we have to go to court on this matter, we have very good lawyers in the United National Congress and we will take this Government to court. We have to remember that the only reason why we have a Local Government Elections is because we had to go to the Privy Council, knock on their doors for the people to have their right to vote in this election.”
Political Leader of the National Transformation Alliance, Gary Griffith, who was on the walkabout with Hosein and the UNC’s Local Government Elections candidates also shared his views saying the Government does not look good in the court of public opinion.
“The country, they’re seeing the hypocrisy, the double standard. The country needs to remember $45 million was pumped into the account of the Police Service and I was directed to hire one specific law firm in the United Kingdom and I was directed to ensure that it was to investigate political opponents of this Government. No procurement process, nothing was done,” Griffith said.
“The double standard, the hypocrisy where these individuals feel that they could own and control the Treasury, the court of public opinion will indeed find them guilty,” he added.