RHON­DOR DOWLAT

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.