MOONILAL: TTTI DAMN FARSE AND OUTTA PLACE

The Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute (TTTI), which has stayed silent through the tenure of the corrupt Rowley regime, is absurd in its demand to be kept out of national politics. They are so coward they will not even put a name to their statement. If you can’t even disclose your writer, how can you demand disclosure by the dictatorial monolith state sector? In years gone by, TTTI had a spokesperson, today they send nameless releases, in mortal fear of the PNM political mafia !

I call on the TTTI to state to the public who are their directors ? Is a director or an office holder a controversial EBC appointee related to a former PNM minister and the Prime Minister ? The Guyanese elections debacle must guide us to avoid covert or overt political appointees. In the TTTI release they remained blind and blatantly avoided identifying alleged or perceived acts of corruption. Over the past seven years the agency has neither identified or championed any such cause!

This hypocrisy is disturbing ! It is appalling !! It undermines democracy!

After becoming a footstool of the current administration, TTTI is damn farse and outta place to try to adopt a moral high ground.

I reiterate my declaration that the institute went to sleep as soon as the PNM entered national office.

TTTI has not uttered a word on the ineffective and shambolic procurement legislation, and the lethargy in introducing whistleblower law which was promised almost eight years ago.

The institute turned the other cheek as the PNM, which was indebted to the value of $4 million in 2015, has managed to construct new state-of-the-art headquarters, at an estimated cost of $100 million.

TTTI has not broken its silence on repeated findings of the Auditor General of gross irregularities in the accounts of taxpayer-owned enterprises.

The institute has failed to undertake an investigation into the revelation of the procurement regulator that an average of $5.2 billion is cheated every year in corruption, waste, and inefficiency.

The country has not heard TTTI on irregularities at Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago, including the re-opening of the tendering process to facilitate a single bidder.

The institute lost its tongue when the Rowley Government withdrew litigation against then-officials of the State-owned oil company for a collapsed project that set back taxpayers $3 billion. TTTI was quiet over the CCTV “tendering” scandal and the collapse of such a critical infrastructure for crime fighting.

The Prime Minister himself admitted in February 2022 that “white-collar criminal conduct … currently flourishes with impunity” in the public sector.

The transparency body lost its backbone as soon as the PNM entered national office, and has no moral authority to challenge criticisms of its shameless emasculation.

To understand TTTI’s role in national affairs, Trinidadians and Tobagonians merely have to reflect on the dreadful fact that one of its bosses became a diplomat of the Rowley Government.

I call on Transparency International to be Transparent ! I did not put the Transparency International into politics – they put themselves.