WE WANT ANSWERS, MR. PRIME MINISTERBy Andre Bagoo Friday, March 5 2010
THE CONGRESS of the People (COP) yesterday called on Prime Minister Patrick Manning to immediately account for his failure to take action against Udecott executive chairman Calder Hart in light of fresh evidence linking Hart to a company his board awarded $820 million in contracts.
“The Prime Minister should account to the Parliament and indicate what actions the Government will take in order to preserve the integrity of the public justice system of Trinidad and Tobago,” Dookeran said yesterday at a press conference at the COP’s Flagship House on Tragarete Road, Port-of-Spain.
His comments echoed those in a letter he despatched to the Office of the Prime Minister one day after documents which appear to conclusively establish family ties between Hart and Sunway Construction Caribbean Limited, the Malaysian firm at work on the Government’s $820 million Ministry of Legal Affairs Tower, emerged after a six-week COP investigation.
“In light of the information which has come to light...and given the positions previously adopted by you in Parliament it seems to me that it is incumbent upon the Prime Minister to render an account to the nation as to what actions will be taken to safeguard the interests of the people of Trinidad and Tobago with respect to this matter,” Dookeran wrote to the Prime Minister.
The COP also yesterday revealed it has lodged all of the documents it has gathered, including birth and marriage certificates linking Mrs Sherrine Hart with two men once listed as directors of Sunway Construction, with the Uff Commission of Inquiry.
The timing of the developments are crucial as High Court Judge Justice Mira Dean-Armorer is scheduled to this afternoon deliver judgment on a challenge brought by Udecott against the Uff Inquiry which will determine whether or not the commissioners will be able to submit a final report to President George Maxwell Richards.
That judgment could come as Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar this afternoon makes moves to raise the Udecott issue in Parliament as a definite matter of urgent public importance under Standing Order 12.
“Once these documents are genuine documents I am of the view that the Prime Minister should fire Mr Hart,” Persad-Bissesar said.
Asked by Newsday if he would resign in the wake of the fresh documentary evidence, Hart said, “I have no comment for you, Mr Bagoo.”
In Parliament on October 22, Manning dismissed allegations of family ties against Hart which had been lodged in the Uff Inquiry by Mrs Hart’s ex-husband Carl Khan. Khan had deposed, in three sworn statutory declarations, that Mrs Hart was the sister of Lee Hup Ming and Ng Chin Poh, both former directors of Sunway Construction Caribbean Limited.
Yet in Parliament, Manning defended Udecott and attacked Khan, saying, “what Udecott was trying to do, acting as the agent of the Government, not on their own, was to bring about a new order in the construction industry. They want to get Calder Hart, but let me tell you it is not Calder Hart. It is not Udecott. They want the Prime Minister and the Government. That’s what they are after!” Of Khan and those who noted his allegations, he said, “they are not interested in truth. They prefer to rely on the evidence of a jilted lover.”
Among the documents obtained by the COP, which were yesterday despatched to the Office of the Prime Minister and that of Attorney General John Jeremie, are birth certificates which disclose that Mrs Hart’s sister is Lee Soeh Ching (also known as Adeline Lee). A marriage certificate further shows that Lee is the wife of Ng Chin Poh, one-time Sunway Caribbean director. The documents also tie former Sunway director Lee Hup Ming, to Lee Hup Seng, a brother of Mrs Hart.
Acting DPP Roger Gaspard, who last year forwarded a dossier on the claims against Hart to Acting Police Commissioner James Philbert, yesterday assured he would examine the fresh documents. “I look at all correspondence that comes to me,” he said. Calls to Philbert’s mobile phone went unanswered.
“What is outrageous is the fact that the institutions that are supposed to be investigating and taking action in these matters appear to be compromising the process and that is the most disturbing aspect of this whole situation,” Dookeran said at yesterday’s press conference. “There appears to be a tendency to cover-up and protect what clearly is a situation that ought to be investigated.” he called on the entire Udecott board to act “honourably” in light of the emergence of clear family links between Hart and Sunway Construction Caribbean Limited.
“We believe that honour would require the authorities, including the Udecott board, to take note of this information and then we hope that they will act in a manner that protects the integrity of the whole position at this point,” he said as he also called for a forensic audit of Udecott.
COP deputy political leader, and attorney, Prakash Ramadhar, outlined the process by which the party obtained the documents.
“It’s a very simple thing...these are documents which are in the public domain and one of our members made an application through a Malaysian law firm and we were able to very quickly obtain them,” he said. “Why in a simple matter of obtaining documentary evidence which is publically available in Malaysia there has not been any effort made to bring these to Trinidad and Tobago? We find it grievous that we had to do it but we did it because we have a sense of a need to serve our country.”
Diego Martin West MP Dr Keith Rowley, whose sacking in April 2008 set in motion a sequence of events that culminated with the emergence of damning evidence emerging at the Uff Inquiry, yesterday said, “this latest info simply proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that certain things happened at Udecott which should be unacceptable to the decent law abiding citizens of Trinidad and Tobago and the Government has a duty to act when confronted with such information.”
In the face of mounting evidence against Hart, the Government also yesterday failed to address the issue. Leader of Government Business in the Lower House Colm Imbert, questioned on the issue at the post-Cabinet press briefing at the Prime Minister’s Residence, La Fantasie, said, “those are matters for Mr Hart and Mrs Hart to answer not for me. I don’t know these people. I have never met them and therefore I cannot answer. I don’t know whether those things are true or not.” Attorney General John Jeremie did not respond to queries on the issue.
At the same time, an advertisement from Sunway today responds to reports of the fresh documents. In the advertisement, the company denies “any form of improper business conduct with Udecott and any of its employers, managers or Board members.” The advertisement, however, fails to address the key issue of relations between the two former directors and Mrs Hart.
“What is at stake here is that the utterances of the Government and its agencies cannot be believed and trusted,” Dookeran noted. “It is up to the Government of the day to restore the confidence of the people.”
