Jerlean John is new UDECOTT chairman
Calder Hart
The Prime Minister announces Calder Hart’s replacement this morning. He shocked the press by announcing that he has been in the country since Tuesday.
Jerlean John, Chief Executive Officer of the Housing Development Corporation (HDC), is the new Chairman of the controversial UDECOTT State special purpose company.
Prime Minister Patrick Manning made the announcement during a hastily called press conference at 11 a.m today, stressing that she will not be an executive chairman as her predecessor Calder Hart who resigned on Saturday.
At the conference which lasted 30 minutes, Mr Manning continued defending Hart asking “he is guilty of what?”
“It is not for me to determine innocence or guilt…let the law take its course.”
The Prime Minister, when asked to explain the circumstances surrounding Hart’s resignation, he said:
“On Friday, the Attorney General approached me and indicated that on the basis of the stage at which certain investigations had reached, he wanted to draw to my attention the fact that Mr Calder Hart may have a case to answer. And especially in the light of that together with public disclosures, I thought that I should have a conversation with Mr Hart which I did. Following that conversation, Mr Hart concluded that the best thing to do in all circumstances was to step away .to allow the investigations to go on. And to give him the appropriate time to clear his name which I imagine he is now in the process of seeking to do.”
He pointed out that it was not necessary to ask Hart to resign.
Did he still have faith in the former UDECOTT chairman?
“What relevance is that”, he snapped. “I have faith in God, my dear.”
He indicated that he agreed that Hart was hounded as Planning and Housing Minister Emily Gaynor Dick-Forde charged and spoke about a “lynch mob’.
The Prime Minister shocked the press by stating that he was in country since Tuesday, having returned from the Commonwealth Day celebrations in London.
The new UDECOTT chairman was appointed as HDC CEO last August and was Minister of Transport, Tourism and Tobago United National Congress (UNC) towards the end of the Panday Administration.
More later today on press conference.