Manning must come clean on Guanapo church

Several prominent national figures are saying that Prime Minister Patrick manning has failed to properly explain the controversial issues about the church under construction in Arima.

At least three people - political scientist Selwyn Ryan, political thinker Michael Harris and attorney Timothy Hamel-Smith - have said Manning's explanations about documentation unveiled by opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar raise more questions than provided answers.

Ryan said on the TV6 show Morning Edition Monday that the documents released by Persad-Bissessar suggest that there is "a distinct possibility that funds for one project were diverted to another".

He said there is strong enough public interest to warrant an investigation.

Hamel-Smith said the real suspicions arose from the fact that Shanghai Construction built a number of government projects with enormous cost overruns.

"You begin to wonder whether the overruns in these projects (NAPA, Tarouba Stadium etc) were used to facilitate the construction at Guanapo," he said adding that "the correspondence suggests that the Prime Minister had some personal involvement beyond this being just his spiritual adviser."

Hamel Smith said the suspicions are that "designs were done free of charge to facilitate this and Shanghai was involved, some suggest, doing this for free."

Harris said as chairman of UDeCOTT and given the huge overruns on UDeCOTT projects, one could speculate on the availability of funds to Hart.

"But to say that Calder Hart is building a church for the PM’s spiritual adviser is patently ridiculous, but even more disconcerting is Manning excusing the corruption and utter waste of funds by talking about cutting corners," Harris said.

He added, "If you talking about $4 billion as cutting corners then something is really wrong".

Harris said the country deserves to know where the money for the church came from, particularly in the light of the implication that it might be State funds.

He said it is clear that said the designs were done for UDeCOTT and the letter was addressed to Hart as UDeCOTT chairman and UDeCOTT dealt with state funds.

"There are enormous questions to be asked and the country deserves to know," Harris said.

Hamel-Smith rejected Manning's suggestion that the reference to "PM" in the correspondence between the architect and Calder Hart meant "Project Manager".

Manning seemed to have come up with the explanation as an afterthought because in the lengthy rebuttal of the allegations by Persad-Bissessar the PNM never dealt with any issues raised by the opposition leader and did not comment on the "PM" reference.

Hamel Smith said a project manager normally does not get into the design aspects until the project is on the way. He said Manning was just being evasive, noting that from the context of the letter to Hart it is clear that It could not be the project manager.