Ra­mona Ram­di­al

Did a “slim six-foot-tall man” who “is well known in po­lit­i­cal cir­cles” re­al­ly of­fer a bribe to in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Mark Bas­sant to “kill” the sto­ry on the sus­pend­ed $3.4 bil­lion HDC con­struc­tion pro­gramme? If re­al, the temer­i­ty of the in­di­vid­ual had to have been mo­ti­vat­ed by a strong be­lief that Mark Bas­sant was “for sale”.

Oth­er than that, it was sheer stu­pid­i­ty. The Hous­ing Min­is­ters should seek out Mr Bas­sant to iden­ti­fy this in­di­vid­ual who claimed to op­er­ate on their be­half. This in­di­vid­ual ac­tu­al­ly sought to put out a fire with gaso­line and can­not be a friend of the Gov­ern­ment.

The best op­tion is for the OPR to con­tin­ue with its work on the mat­ter. Its find­ings can help the Gov­ern­ment avoid fu­ture pro­cure­ment con­flicts. How­ev­er, on the heels of this mat­ter comes an­oth­er foul whis­tle from the OPR, this time on new­ly formed State com­pa­ny, Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Lim­it­ed, due to its al­leged se­lec­tive ten­der­ing in the award of $100 mil­lion in con­tracts at the Al­lam­by res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment Project.

There is a pro­cure­ment de­part­ment in every Min­istry, and the Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs should have been ad­vised by the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary and oth­er se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials in ad­vance of any pos­si­ble vi­o­la­tions of pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion. How could this par­tic­u­lar min­istry get it wrong? How could this brand new State com­pa­ny play right in­to the hands of the Op­po­si­tion? Was there a pub­lic dis­clo­sure of the project’s award? Were el­i­gi­ble, qual­i­fied lo­cal con­trac­tors in any way re­strict­ed from bid­ding or oth­er­wise treat­ed un­fair­ly? This par­tic­u­lar project has not been halt­ed, how­ev­er.

The Op­po­si­tion PNM is seek­ing to smear these new hous­ing projects as re­wards to UNC par­ty fi­nanciers. This Gov­ern­ment would know well that shoe be­ing on the oth­er foot not too long ago. Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein iden­ti­fied the PNM’s poor pro­cure­ment prac­tices when they were in gov­ern­ment, and in the award of $10 bil­lion in con­tracts. I won­der if there could be some sort of in­de­pen­dent pub­lic in­ter­est coun­cil that could ref­er­ee these “do so, eh like so” re­wards to par­ty fi­nanciers, so that greater fo­cus can be placed on the high­est stan­dards of pro­cure­ment prac­tices.

Does our lo­cal busi­ness cul­ture pro­mote such ideals in the pub­lic in­ter­est, or is it the usu­al grav­i­ta­tion to­wards the “friends and fam­i­ly” short­cut?

The Op­po­si­tion PNM has al­so ac­cused Min­is­ter Ho­sein of ex­hibit­ing nepo­tism and crony­ism in his pop­u­la­tion of the Land­mark­TT board and oth­er State boards with mem­bers of his Barataria/San Juan con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive and col­leagues from his law cham­bers. The quick and easy de­fence is to say “the PNM did it too” but not the hard­er “we are bet­ter than them”.

In this col­umn, I crit­i­cised the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment for putting New­man George, hus­band of for­mer House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George, on mul­ti­ple State boards. Per­haps the UNC Gov­ern­ment can im­prove its ap­point­ments by scan­ning its own par­ty for ex­pe­ri­enced, com­pe­tent mem­bers who can help the Gov­ern­ment avoid some of the re­cent pit­falls.

It is hoped that the OPR will con­clude their in­ves­ti­ga­tions, re­port their find­ings, and make rec­om­men­da­tions that will help the Gov­ern­ment to avoid fu­ture de­lays in de­liv­er­ing eco­nom­ic stim­u­la­tion. How much of the $3.4 bil­lion HDC and $100 mil­lion Land­mark­TT con­tract val­ues will be spent in Trin­ba­go, re­gard­less of who wins the awards? Such projects gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant em­ploy­ment and in­come for many homes. The de­lays are un­for­tu­nate. It should be manda­to­ry for all min­istries, State agen­cies and State com­pa­nies to hold Pro­cure­ment work­shops to ed­u­cate and de­vel­op a cul­ture of in­tegri­ty, trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and due process to avoid fur­ther em­bar­rass­ment, at least.

Last week, AG John Je­re­mie in­formed the Par­lia­ment that a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­ci­dent was sparked by a threat from a par­tic­u­lar gang mem­ber. Con­se­quent­ly, MPs and cer­tain Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials tem­porar­i­ly re­ceived an in­creased se­cu­ri­ty de­tail. CoP Gue­var­ro con­firmed this in­for­ma­tion.

It is un­cer­tain what be­came of this threat. Was the gang mem­ber held on a PDO? What if he or oth­ers make new threats? If he is a known gang mem­ber, why not lock him and his gang up? What is the de­f­i­n­i­tion of “gang” in this case? Are these “gangs” and “crews” ter­ror­is­ing in­no­cent cit­i­zen­ry? Many mem­bers of the pub­lic be­lieve that the threat was just an­oth­er lie to ra­tio­nalise the ex­ten­sion of the SoE.

The Par­lia­ment passed the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (DNA) (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, last Fri­day night, giv­ing the State pow­ers to sam­ple the DNA of re­turn­ing na­tion­als from con­flict zones, sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ists, and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty threats. This is a good move as this leg­is­la­tion can fur­ther strength­en our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus and utilise the “per­sons of in­ter­est” lists pro­vid­ed by for­eign gov­ern­ments, as that re­ceived from the US gov­ern­ment ear­li­er this year. On the heels of the Pa­role Bill, it is ev­i­dent that the Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to re­pair the leg­isla­tive frame­work of our rick­ety crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

The Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment’s cold shoul­der gave way to an icy glare when it an­nounced an oil spill in the Gulf of Paria ear­li­er this month. En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Mooni­lal in­di­cat­ed that the in­ci­dent was Tier One, which was less than 50 bar­rels and would cause no ma­jor en­vi­ron­men­tal threats. Could this present an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­dress all of our neigh­bour’s en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ad­vance our own en­er­gy agen­da?