By COREY CONNELLY Monday, September 7 2009

The Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute (TTTI) yesterday called for answers concerning reports that the Commission of Inquiry into Udecott and the construction sector had not been gazetted.

“This is very elementary, therefore, I am surprised that it was overlooked,” TTTI chairman Victor Hart said in a strongly-worded statement.

“This is a serious matter that should be dealt with transparently by telling the public who is to blame for this costly error and the guilty person or persons should be held accountable.”

Hart’s statement came one day after it was reported that the fourth and final round of sittings of the Commission of Inquiry, which were expected to begin today, had been postponed indefinitely because of a legal hitch.

The commission’s chairman Prof John Uff, in an e-mail sent by the commission’s secretariat to all parties on Saturday, stated a hearing would not take place today, as was originally scheduled.

He said a press conference would instead be held at 11 am.

Sources have said, though, that under the Commission of Inquiry Act “all commissions shall be published in the Gazette and shall take effect from the date of publication.”

Hart yesterday said he was surprised by the news the commission had not been gazetted.

“I am surprised because the legal requirement to gazette a commission of inquiry is well known,” he said, recalling this was done for previous inquiries.

“Hart said he was also concerned because millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money had been spent on the inquiry to date “and more will be spent because of this delay.”

“In order to correct this error, it is necessary not only to gazette the inquiry without further delay but it may be necessary to pass an Act of Parliament to make the gazetting retroactive to the start of the inquiry,” he added.

Hart said the country would lose the benefit of the commissioners’ recommendations on public sector procurement reform if the inquiry was aborted.

“I am concerned that some persons who the evidence to date suggests may have engaged in wrongdoing may not be investigated further and held to account for their actions,” he added.

Hart said the development showed Trinidad and Tobago as being “very Third World” and unable to get simple things right.”

Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday, battling the flu, insisted the breach was deliberate.

“The Government did not want the Commission of Inquiry because they said nothing was going to come out of it,” he said. “The failure to publish it was a deliberate ploy to declare it null and void in the event that things were going against them.”

The Congress of the People (COP) agreed.

“We consider this manouvre to be a deliberate and calculated plot to prematurely abort the Commission of Inquiry and it is tantamount to fraud,” COP political leader Winston Dookeran said in a statement. “The failure of not gazetting is too basic and fundamental an error for it not to have been deliberate. Those responsible must go.”

Dookeran called on the Acting Police Commissioner and Director of Public Prosecutions to launch an immediate criminal investigation based on evidence already made available to the commission. Former attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj claimed the Government was involved in a “cover-up.”

“The Government is allowing Udecott to control the future of the inquiry....If they are committed to exposing corruption, let the chips fall where they may.”