Planning Minister Dr Emily Gaynor Dick-Forde never gave any directions to the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago (UDeCOTT) board regarding its lawsuit against the commission of enquiry into its operations, according to its deputy chairman, Dr Krishna Bahadoorsingh.

He was speaking at a news conference yesterday at UDeCOTT’s office at Sackville Street, Port of Spain, where he declared that the UDeCOTT board, which is led by executive chairman Calder Hart, had no plans to resign over its decision to challenge the enquiry in court amid calls for them to do so from within and outside of the Parliament.

Insisting UDeCOTT was not disobeying the Government, Bahadoorsingh said, ’I can say unequivocally we have had no directions from our line minister on this particular matter.’

Among those calling for the UDeCOTT board to resign are Opposition Senator Wade Mark, Independent Senator Dr Subhas Ramkhelawan, Opposition MP Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj and a former Cabinet member, Diego Martin West MP Dr Keith Rowley.

’Let me make this clear. The board of UDeCOTT is fully satisfied that it has been performing its fiduciary duties faithfully and diligently and no member has any intention of conceding to any such demands,’ Bahadoorsingh said.

The commission has essentially been shut down for the next four months, after the High Court’s decision on Friday to grant UDeCOTT its application of interim relief halting the enquiry’s proceedings until the hearing of the corporation’s judicial review against the commission on the grounds of alleged bias is heard in February 2010.

Bahadoorsingh said yesterday that if Dick-Forde or UDeCOTT’s corporation sole, Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira, issues any instruction to the State corporation to withdraw its application for judicial review, it would not automatically follow the directive as it would have to seek legal advice.

’I would think that if we are given a specific directive to do this, this will be under serious consideration and we’ll then have to go back to our senior counsel to get advice from him. I don’t know whether the senior counsel would have a suggestion at this stage but we will have to go back and get advice... at that stage,’ Bahadoorsingh said.

Asked if the corporation sole had issued any instructions to the UDeCOTT board to withdraw its judicial review, Bahadoorsingh said, ’So far as I am aware... I do not believe we have had any specific directive from the corporation sole on this particular matter.’

He was joined at the news conference by UDeCOTT board directors Independent Senator Michael Annisette, attorney Anthony Cherry and Wendell Dottin.

Absent from the news conference was UDeCOTT executive chairman Calder Hart.

Bahadoorsingh said he was ’deputising’ for Hart, who not in attendance because ’he was called out to a meeting’.

Bahadoorsingh said if any of the UDeCOTT board members had ’the slightest perception that there is anything amiss about the corporation ’we would leave’, as he noted they do not ’need’ to be on the board.

Cherry told reporters yesterday that even though UDeCOTT is wholly owned by the State, this did not mean it did not have the right to challenge the enquiry that had been established by President George Maxwell Richards on the advice of Prime Minister Patrick Manning.

’I can’t understand why you are suggesting because there is a commission of enquiry we must take it wholesale. So you can sit there and be battered day in and day out, have all of your rights trampled against and sit there and say-the Government appointed it, so we must take what we get. There are certain ways that commissions of enquiry are to be conducted,’ Cherry said.

Noting that an enquiry is, for all intents and purposes, a court, Cherry said that if the existing one ’is not being conducted in accordance with the law, it is our right to protest and to challenge that’.

Bahadoorsingh said that ’it is not that UDeCOTT went out’ to get a postponement of the enquiry in its legal actions against the commission to date, as he pointed out that the interim relief ruling resulted from the consent of the lawyers representing the enquiry.

’We don’t want anything stopped... We just want (it) to be fair, to be equitable, to be just,’ Bahadoorsingh said.

Asked if UDeCOTT lawyers had apprised the board of the talks they had with the commission’s attorneys ’every step of the way’, Bahadoorsingh said the board ’is not directly involved in the process’.

’We are just given the results. The lawyers are given a commission and they go and represent you,’ he said.

Bahadoorsingh said that had UDeCOTT’s interim relief or judicial review applications been frivolous, ’the judge would have thrown it out’.