The Bermudian public has not for a minute bought Premier Alex Scott?s assertion that Government was given ?a clean bill of health? after the Bermuda Housing Corporation investigation, Opposition Deputy Leader Michael Dunkley said yesterday.

The Premier?s attempt to ?try to cover it up, say nothing untoward happened, is sickening,? Mr. Dunkley added.

Mr. Dunkley also disputed the Premier?s claims regarding the Opposition?s attitude towards Pro-Active Management Systems, the company contracted to build the new senior secondary school at Berkeley Road.

In an interview which ran in yesterday, Mr. Scott defended his Government against accusations of corruption and mismanagement at the BHC.

?No one was found guilty,? Mr. Scott repeated last week. ?We can?t hold anyone guilty of laws which do not exist.

?Now you want to review the laws, that?s fair comment. But don?t smear a Government ... don?t denigrate people who are serving and serving well because you didn?t get the conclusion you were trying to persuade the public was so.?

He blamed the Opposition for a smear campaign and accused the media of supporting it without facts.

But the facts are there in the Auditor General?s report, Mr. Dunkley said yesterday.

Mr. Dunkley rehashed some of the details from the Auditor General?s report. Leaked to in 2003 and officially released to the public by Mr. Scott in 2004, the report found: two Government MPs heavily involved in dealings with the Corporation without disclosing their interests; contractors who got away with double-billing and charging what they liked, sometimes double the amounts quoted for jobs; loans that were given to clients and BHC officials without being secured or given Ministerial permission; policies and procedures that were blatantly ignored; and, that the responsibilities of the board had virtually been abolished.

With all of those findings, Mr. Dunkley wondered again if Government had been involved from the beginning or if they were merely asleep at the wheel. ?Did the Premier or the former Premier (Jennifer Smith) know what was going on?? he asked.

?There were serious allegations, not only from the Opposition, but right there in cold, hard black and white in the Auditor General?s report... How can they explain that? You can?t change the facts.?

Auditor General Larry Dennis declined to comment on the Premier?s statements last night.

To say Government should not be smeared because the Opposition did not get the conclusion they wanted was ?absolute nonsense?, Mr. Dunkley said.

?What he has done is admit that he supports unacceptable behaviour and that his Government lacks transparency at every turn.?

The public sees through such comments, he said ? and then believes that if the Government does it, they can do it too. ?People say, we don?t need to be accountable.?

Mr. Dunkley also did not believe the Premier when he declared that a debate will be held in Parliament on the Auditor General?s report. ?I won?t hold my breath. If he took the time to read it, he would never have made those comments.?

A motion to take note of the report is on the Orders of the Day for the House of Assembly, and if the Premier does not move it within three months, it will expire. The Premier can ask for it to be placed on the Orders for another three months if necessary.

Mr. Dunkley hoped the motion would be debated in order for the Government to come clean. ?They need to say, this is what happened, and this is what we are doing going forward... Get the answers out there, because nobody in the community is comfortable with what went on.

?The Premier, in polite terms, is trying to mislead the public. He is politricking. He is making the facts come out as something different.?

On Mr. Scott?s assertions that UBP realtors were involved in shady dealings, Mr. Dunkley called for facts. ?If it was wrong, then we?ll look into it, but that doesn?t make things right now.?

As for the Premier?s comments regarding Pro-Active Management Systems and the construction contract for the new senior secondary school, Mr. Dunkley said ?the master of smoke and mirrors? was again spinning.

Despite Mr. Scott?s accusation that the UBP never supported Pro-Active, Mr. Dunkley said his party had not criticised the company.

?We criticised the process,? he said. Pro-Active was hired when Mr. Scott, as Minister of Works and Engineering, hired the company against the wishes of his civil servants, who had concerns about the company?s ability.

Mr. Scott said one reason the company failed was because of unsuccessful attempts to gain credit from financial institutions. However, Mr. Dunkley said Government obviously had not supported them in that regard.

Had a company gone to a financial institution with the backing of the Bermuda Government ? a Government with strong financial backing ? and asked for credit, he said, they would have got it.

?Who is going to argue against a Government with strong financial backing?? he asked.

Government set Pro-Active up to fail, he said: by picking them in the first place, then failing to support them, and finally by firing them one month before the contract deadline.

The project was months overdue and millions of dollars over cost anyway, he said. ?So why fire them one month before the deadline when they could have done so one month later without any ramifications from Pro-Active??

?Stand up and say mistakes took place,? he challenged the Government. ?You can?t erase a record.?