Vicente testified for less than 40 minutes, and with that - the three man Commission has gotten the bulk of its initial evidence. It will review the testimony and a big box of documents from the Financial Secretary and re-convene publicly on February 26th.
This afternoon the leader of the opposition gave his review of the first day and basically said "where's the beef?":
Hon. Patrick Faber - Leader of the Opposition
"From what we saw this morning there was in fact no fire sale of government assets which brings to mind and we have to question what is the agenda of this administration? How much are they paying for this circus that has begun this morning? It is clear that there is nothing in terms of government assets firesold if you are using the term that you brought to me. It is clear that that is not the case."
Reporter
"Sir, the UDP chairman was giving the privilege to purchase, I believe the word used is reinforced furniture and laptops. Can you comment on this?"
Hon. Patrick Faber
"Well that is what we are hearing but I will tell you that from very early after the elections, the Chairman, Senator Peyrefitte brought to us in the party his documentation exactly that the Financial Secretary's office had approved him purchasing the couches and some reinforced chairs. You know that the chairman is a very strong fellow, big fellow. So, he had some custom made furniture for his office at the time and his Ministry felt that there was no use leaving that behind if he could purchase it. And as to the laptop and the ipad, as I am told you heard the Prime Minister say that he was not aware. Certainly as a senior member of Cabinet at the time I was not aware. But there is nothing wrong with that. When you utilize computers, personal computers or ipads you put your personal information on there sometimes and for those computers to be used again they would have to be wiped clean you'd have to employ a whole lot of tactics to get them ready again for some other use. In fact, I don't think that that is a very wise or common practice in terms of personal laptops. Desktops are a different thing. So, I don't know. I'm not defending any of that but even if that is the case, that is one Minister. The way the PUPs talk you would have thought that they could not find any vehicles for CEOs and Ministers."
