IT is exceedingly difficult for the ordinary observer to accept that the obstinate actions of the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago are not being carried out with the full support and concurrence of authorities high up in the government.

UDeCOTT, a state corporation under the aegis of the Corporation Sole, which authority is vested in the Minister of Finance, continues to cavalierly defy government action and decisions.

The corporation, run by figures with direct, powerful access to persons at the top of the country’s authority chain, has long been accused of flouting its obligations to submit to the normal scrutiny of the various ministers who have Cabinet responsibility for its operations.

Indeed, the Commission of Enquiry into the operations of the construction sector came about in large part because of the constant complaints by stakeholders in various quarters, including in the government, over allegations of arrogance by UDeCOTT’s high level officials.

After initially fighting off strenuous calls for such a Commission, the Cabinet went kicking and screaming into accepting its inevitability.

From the beginning, however, the UDeCOTT was a reluctant participant. It had literally to be made to submit to the directives of the Commission, to provide vital information concerning its operations and its decision-making in the award of public contracts costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now, after months of the conduct of expensive hearings, the Commission hit a snag after it was discovered that the exercise had not been officially gazetted. The government moved on two fronts, first to find out what went wrong with this elementary procedure, and then to bring legislation that would have the effect of saving all the costly work conducted in the public interest on this matter.

Incredibly, however, the UDeCOTT has now seized upon this admittedly embarrassing blunder, in another effort to scuttle the entire project.

The corporation wants now to get the Commission to remove from its website any and all information related to it which was submitted at the hearings and which became part of the proceedings, and the public record.

It has decided to go further and is reported to be planning a legal challenge to that decision of the government.

As a further insult to ordinary logic, it is committing another huge chunk of public funds to continue this incredible saga. These are the actions of a rogue elephant, feeding vexatiously at the public trough.

On what authority, real or presumed, are these latest outrages being undertaken, the people of Trinidad and Tobago must be informed and educated, by those whose ultimate responsibility it is, so to do.