Legal sources have said the passage of a Validation Act by the Parliament to give retroactive legal standing to the Commission of Enquiry into the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago and the construction sector could be subjected to a legal challenge.

As the Sunday Express reported yesterday, the commission was not published in the Trinidad and Tobago Gazette (or gazetted) and, as such, has no legal standing.

The enquiry’s chairman, Prof John Uff, is expected to hold a news conference today to explain what happened.

In an interview with the Express yesterday, Diego Martin West MP Rowley, who is a witness in the enquiry, said a Validation Bill could be passed by the House of Representatives today and by the Senate tomorrow, to allow the enquiry to give retroactive legal standing to the enquiry, which began its proceedings last September.

Rowley told the Express the bill only requires a simple majority vote of the Government MPs.

Legal sources said that since the enquiry had no legal effect, the privileges and immunities that were supposed to have been provided to witnesses’ submitted written and oral evidence did not exist.

One legal source said that a variation bill would actually take away the rights of those who, at this time, can challenge any of the evidence or claims made during the enquiry’s proceedings. As such, the source questioned whether in fact such a bill should require a special majority vote of Government and Opposition MPs in the Lower House.

’Taking away the rights of people which are already vested and subjecting people retroactively to things like subpoenas and summons and providing immunities from prosecution and so on, if I have a right of action ... now an act of Parliament taking away that right is taking away my right of process,’ one source said.

The source added that if a Variation Act for the enquiry is passed by a simple majority, ’this will be tested in the courts’, as it will also give Uff and the commission authority to conduct the proceedings retroactively from last September.