Humphrey gets mad

QUESTIONS as to whether the Canadian firm, Scott and Associates Incorporated (SAI) made a presentation to get the job as consultants for the Piarco Airport Development project — now the subject of a Commission of Inquiry — yesterday caused former Housing Minister John Humphrey to become angry and engage in a virtual shouting match with attorney Christopher Hamel-Smith, who represents NIPDEC. At one point Humphrey was also engaged in cross-talk at the same time that Commission chairman Clinton Bernard intervened to call on him to maintain his cool. Humphrey insisted that Hamel-Smith should only ask him questions about things he knows, rather than ask him to interpret information contained in documents.

He even accused the Commission of allowing “witnesses to interpret things they know nothing about.” “Don’t ask me anything about what I don’t know! Ask me what I can answer and not try to implicate me about nothing I know about,” shouted Humphrey. Humphrey yesterday accused former attorney general Ramesh Lawrence-Maharaj of looking for excuses to stop the Piarco project and he dismissed NIPDEC as incompetent and inexperienced with respect to the fast-track method. Hamel-Smith kept repeating questions to Humphrey about whether or not Scott and Associates’ “presentation” was its bid to become consultants in the airport project but Humphrey said Hamel-Smith’s “stubbornness” was only a fraction of his and maintained he should be cross-examined based on the evidence he gave to the  Commission. Chairman Clinton Bernard intervened on several occasions to call for tempers to cool down pointing out to Humphrey that Hamel-Smith was allowed to ask questions on any matter within the Commission’s terms of reference, and assured him that if Hamel-Smith went beyond that, he would be stopped.

Humphrey’s anger came during his admission that when he attended a presentation by Birk Hillman Consultants (BHC) at the Hilton on October 17, 1996, he was of the view that the Cabinet-appointed task force had already selected BHC as the preferred consultants for the project. Humphrey was shown a copy of the task force minutes which showed that the same day that BHC made its presentation in the afternoon, Scott and Associates Inc (SAI) had also given a presentation the same morning. Humphrey was adamant that he could not interpret that to mean that Scott and Associates were making a presentation in a bid to be selected as consultants, but he admitted that it was “possible” that the task force had selected BHC for the Piarco project before Scott’s presentation.

Hamel-Smith posed numerous questions in different ways to have Humphrey confirm that the Scott Associates’ presentation was merely a charade or a rival one over BHC’s, but Humphrey refused to say yes, insisting that it was merely a possibility which he could not confirm because he was not present when Scott Associates made their presentation, but was only there for the BHC presentation. Humphrey would only agree that based on the minutes, Scott Associates was invited to make “a presentation”. He later said that maybe the task force met after the Scott Associates’ presentation and decided to reject their proposal. Told that such a decision would have been made prior to hearing BHC’s proposal, Humphrey further said that could be so, since both companies had proposals “on the table” long before that date.

Earlier Humphrey disputed that Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Works, Justin Paul, was not a member of the task force. A Cabinet minute showed that Cabinet had directed that only one Ministry of Works and Transport representative be on the task force, that is, Sonia Francis. But Humphrey said that wasn’t the case because Paul signed the reports of the task force. He then admitted that based on his experience, it was proper for a Cabinet minister to make a change in a Cabinet decision, if he met in private consultation with the Prime Minister (PM). Asked if it was necessary for the Prime Minister to ratify that change, Humphrey said it depended on the Prime Minister. Humphrey said the PM was the centre of power and he had the power to fire and hire.

Asked if the PM treated Ministers as he wished, Humphrey said the PM’s he worked under the NAR and UNC regime “did not do so”. Humphrey further disclosed yesterday that he was perfectly happy and satisfied to allow BHC to have full powers on the project as approved by Cabinet. He said he was willing to trust them and had full confidence in them to do the project based on the fast-track method. He admitted to having personal misgivings about stopping the project and accused the former Attorney General Ramesh Maharaj of trying to find an excuse to have the project stopped. Humphrey said there was no reason for government to deviate from the way it had organised and structured the project originally and said he believed the cause of the problems later on was because of the interruption of the original approach.

He insisted that NIPDEC had no competence and experience in handling the fast-track method and said it would have been inappropriate for NIPDEC to try to terminate BHC without Cabinet’s approval. Asked about the absence of formal records showing he was appointed Chairman of the Inter-ministerial committee, Humphrey said Prime Minister Basdeo Panday was obviously comfortable with that fact. He said it was a possibility that Panday found it embarrassing for him (Humphrey) to be chairman when Minister of Works and Transport Sadiq Baksh was still in charge of the project as line minister. Humphrey will continue to be questioned this morning when the Inquiry resumes.