Government is pursuing two objectives in the long delay for the start-up of the Commission of Enquiry-firstly, it wants to kill public interest in the whole issue and, secondly, it wants to allow the perpetuators to proceed untrammelled in the nefarious acts.

This is the view of Chief Whip Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, who along with all his Opposition colleagues, held a news conference yesterday following the naming of the Chairman of the Commission of Enquiry.

Noting that the Commission of Enquiry into UDeCOTT (Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago Limited) is scheduled to begin hearings in January next year and to present its report in October 2009 "and probably in 2010", Maharaj said Prime Minister Patrick Manning wanted a useless enquiry.

He said Chairman John Uff "would be impotent to deal with matters in which there is no evidence...in which evidence has been destroyed". And, Maharaj said UDeCOTT has had all the time in the world to destroy documents and records relating to all the transactions which have been criticised.

Maharaj also poured cold water over the so-called impressive credentials of the chairman, saying that if one picked up the Who's Who in law in London, one would see thousands of people like him. "We didn't have to wait for two months to get somebody like that. As a matter of fact when I was Attorney General we appointed three foreigners for a Commission of Enquiry into the administration of justice, within two weeks."

Maharaj said Government, which intended to continue frustrating any proper investigation in serious allegations of misconduct at UDeCOTT, should have appointed the Commission within two weeks of the PM's announcement in the Parliament two months ago.

Furthermore, Maharaj said the Prime Minister could have appointed one of the many retired local judges (as he did with previous commissions of enquiry) or could have approached Chief Justice Ivor Archie to provide a sitting judge who would be relieved from duties to chair the Commission of Enquiry. (- See Page 4)

"The UDeCOTT Commission of Enquiry would not have lasted more than three weeks sitting all day," Maharaj said, adding that Manning weighed down the enquiry from the start by lumping it with an investigation into the entire construction sector. He said if the PM was really serious, he would be appointed an Independent Counsel and provided a special forensic team to the DPP even before the Commission of Enquiry started.

He said the Opposition planned to file a motion of no-confidence in the Prime Minister in the context of the PM's role in respect of the contracts given to Sunway and in t he context of Calder Hart's front-row seat at the People's National Movement's convention.