Yvonne Webb

Chair­man of the In­do-Trin­ba­go Equal­i­ty Coun­cil (Itec) De­vant Ma­haraj has called on Joan Yuille-Williams to re­sign as an am­bas­sador in light of the rev­e­la­tion of the award of $46 mil­lion in "se­cret" schol­ar­ships, dur­ing her tenure as Min­is­ter of Cul­ture.

Speak­ing on a Con­gress of the Peo­ple plat­form in Bar­rack­pore on Wednes­day night, Ma­haraj al­so called on PNM sen­a­tor Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing, one of the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of a schol­ar­ship, "to pay back the mon­ey. Ma­haraj un­earthed the in­for­ma­tion through the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act. Leza­ma-Lee Sing al­leged­ly re­ceived some $300,000 to pur­sue stud­ies for an LLB in law and pol­i­tics, dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2004 to 2006, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster, Lon­don. Ma­haraj al­so called on the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al to launch an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Min­istry of Cul­ture and how tax­pay­ers' mon­ey was be­ing spent. He has al­ready sub­mit­ted a for­mal com­plaint to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­cern­ing the awards. Chair­man of Wednes­day night's meet­ing Robin Moo­nan, a for­mer deputy may­or of the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion, said the Gov­ern­ment should change the name from schol­ar­ship to "skuller­ship."

Moo­nan was al­so crit­i­cal of Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day, say­ing he had no moral au­thor­i­ty to call for any in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to se­cret schol­ar­ships, since his chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to un­re­fut­ed court doc­u­ments, ben­e­fit­ed from a $2 mil­lion schol­ar­ship fund from Cli­co jefe Lawrence Duprey, while Pan­day was prime min­is­ter. He fur­ther chas­tised Pan­day, say­ing that while the UNC was boast­ing that they had 15 seats in the Par­lia­ment and the COP had none, it was the COP that was get­ting more in­for­ma­tion than those who were in the Par­lia­ment col­lect­ing mon­ey. COP Leader Win­ston Dook­er­an closed the meet­ing with a promise to wage war to re­move the likes of Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and Pan­day. Re­fer­ring to the on-and-off strides to­wards uni­ty of the op­po­si­tion forces, Dook­er­an said the COP was now a per­ma­nent fix­ture in the pol­i­tics of this coun­try.

"Any­one who wants to go in­to the gov­ern­ment will have to come to us for us to take them there," Dook­er­an said.