UNC haunted by corruption

THE EDITOR: The Sunday Newsday’s editorial on the position of the Opposition UNC on the report a the teacup issue has hit the nail on the head. The UNC walkout is simply a face saving device since they do not want to face up to the responsibility of their actions for an issue they have created. The actions of UNC members of Parliament clearly reveal they follow the code that “politics has a morality of its own.” This time around it has backfired in their faces. So they employ the strategy of walking out of the Parliament which is already having a damaging effect on the party and its leadership.

They have also suffered a split over the issue. MP Sharma most likely will be suspended so one can expect that the threat of Mr Panday will be carried out — so no UNC in Parliament for a month. The UNC and its leadership continue to be irrelevant to the politics of the country. Hence they create issues out of non-issues such as the storm in a teacup issue. One wonders whether they recognise they are irrelevant to the constituency they purport to represent. The UNC has done well to raise the issue of PNM corruption though the press has done more to expose the latest political scandal. Dr Tim Gopeesingh at UNC’s Monday night meeting dealt at length with the history of corruption under the PNM going as far back as the 1950s.

What this shows is that morality in public affairs continues to be the pressing issue since the litany of PNM corruption is no “propitiatory” answer to the innumerable charges of corruption under the Panday administration: Dhanraj Singh was dismissed by Mr Panday for allegations of corruption — he was supposed to be the scapegoat it seems. Mr Sumairsingh, one may recall, was murdered because he sought to stamp out corruption. Several former UNC ministers are before the Judiciary over the issue of corruption: Basdeo Panday, his finance minister Brian Kuei Tung, Sadiq Baksh, financiers of the UNC. We are reading that another minister may be charged for transferring $200,000 in a London bank account. We read of an account of some unnamed former UNC minister in Japan, and InnCogen is far from over. The ownership of a London flat is also far from over.

Surely, the UNC speakers cannot forever cry “political victimisation” over this issue especially so since in Government, their own ministers began to raise the issue, ministers who are attacked and vilified and eventually dismissed, by Basdeo Panday. With respect to cost overruns on projects: the Piarco airport terminal is a searing indictment on the UNC, followed by cost overruns on almost everything the UNC undertook, such as road resurfacing handled questionably by TIDCO, school construction, etc. The issue of Caroni (1975) Ltd was also raised. The real experience of the former workers will be the final indictment of Basdeo Panday and the UNC.

K P SINGH
Carapichaima