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Architect Stephen Mendes, the man who has held the key as to whether former prime minister Patrick Manning was personally involved in the commissioning of the controversial Guanapo church project, has finally broken his silence on the matter, confirming the ’PM’ he wrote about in a letter dated May 2, 2006, in fact, referred to Prime Minister Patrick Manning.
The ’PM’ referred to in a letter I wrote, dated 2 May, 2006, which I addressed to the chairman of UDeCOTT, Calder Hart, was the then prime minister Patrick Manning.’
Manning has now famously said PM ’may mean Project Manager’. He, also, had said ’maybe’ Hart was involved in his ’personal capacity’, given that UDeCOTT had denied involvement of the company in the controversial project.
Mendes’ newest revelation about Manning’s personal role, also, could lead to the speeding up the criminal investigation requested by Persad-Bissessar into the matter where she claimed the entire fiasco was in breach of the Prevention of Corruption Act, a criminal offence which carries a severe jail term and $500,000 fine.
Manning had famously stood up in Parliament in February and said he was not involved in the personal commissioning of the church, and taxpayers’ dollars were not funding the multi-million-dollar project. But Mendes states:
’I met the then prime minister Patrick Manning at Whitehall at Calder Hart’s request on two occasions, at which my design of the church was discussed.’
Hart skipped the country after a personal one-on-one meeting nearly two months ago with Manning and is yet to return amid an active police investigations into his dealings.
