UNC charges Elias, Foreign Affairs with corruption

SENATE Opposition Leader Wade Mark demanded that Government investigate all contracts awarded to companies involved in the Landate affair, charging that Government was involved in a $24 million Foreign Affairs scandal in South Africa. However, even as Mark made these charges during yesterday’s Budget debate in the Senate, he had no idea that a short distance away at Whitehall, Prime Minister Patrick Manning was announcing that a Commission of Inquiry would be established to investigate the former. Reiterating the UNC’s condemnation of corruption allegations against Housing Minister Dr Keith Rowley being sent to the Integrity Commission, Mark said the Commission could not investigate alleged impropriety by any of the companies involved in the Landate project.

Mark claimed Elias had established a network of agents in order to help NH International procure certain contracts. He questioned whether NH International was in fact the lowest bidder on contracts such as the Scarborough Hospital Project, Phase One of the San Fernando General Hospital upgrade, and the new Customs building in Port-of-Spain. Mark also said under the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) rules of procurement, NH International did not qualify to be the Scarborough Hospital’s contractor because it was registered in the Cayman Islands and hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars could be siphoned off into foreign bank accounts.

The UNC chairman then alleged that Government had spent $24 million to buy real estate in South Africa for diplomatic use, but the buildings were not being used. He also charged that TT’s High Commissioner to South Africa, Donna Carter, was still in Trinidad and drawing a full salary from the Government. Mark also questioned the appointment of certain PNM officials to overseas missions in London, Miami and Toronto. Foreign Affairs Minister Knowlson Gift told Newsday he would respond to Mark’s charges during his contribution in the Senate today. Noting Trinidad and Tobago’s drop in the 2004 Corruption Perception Index, Mark said it reflected the PNM’s hypocrisy on the issue of fighting corruption. “Corruption has gripped the Government,” he declared. Commenting on the murder of Carenage teenager Sherman Monsegue, Mark wondered whether a death squad was operating in TT.

The UNC chairman slammed the Budget as a “cunning exercise in political deception” by Government to cover up rampant poverty and an unprecedented crime wave. Mark questioned whether Government planned to depreciate the TT dollar and said the Budget was only “an illusion of prosperity and the manipulation of key economic indicators. “There is going to be a revolution in this country, but hope is here. The UNC is here. We predict the PNM is destined to fall!” he declared. Earlier in the debate, Minister in the Ministry of Finance Conrad Enill said the Budget was demonstrative of the sound socio-economic policies undertaken by the PNM since it returned to office in 2001,  and “economic progress must be reflected in social progress.”