Gail Alexan­der

Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald's state­ment to the Low­er House last week on the schol­ar­ship award furore has land­ed her in fur­ther con­tro­ver­sy this week in the Up­per House. And it would be known by next week whether this lat­est con­tro­ver­sy would take Mc­Don­ald far as Par­lia­ment's Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee. UNC sen­a­tor Wade Mark at yes­ter­day's Sen­ate ses­sion re­quest­ed that Mc­Don­ald be sent be­fore the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee for al­leged­ly mis­lead­ing the Sen­ate re­gard­ing a seg­ment of her state­ment to the Low­er House last Fri­day on the con­tro­ver­sial schol­ar­ship is­sue.

Mark said Mc­Don­ald gave the Low­er House an "en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent rea­son" for not pre­vi­ous­ly pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion on the schol­ar­ship is­sue when Mark had posed a ques­tion to her on it in the Sen­ate in Ju­ly 2008. "It is a grave con­tempt for any mem­ber to de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead this Sen­ate," Mark said. "It is even more se­ri­ous when that mem­ber is a cab­i­net min­is­ter...All mem­bers are en­ti­tled to re­ly on the in­tegri­ty of in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to them by min­is­ters. "It is a sad day for this Sen­ate when the pro­vi­sions of the laws of T&T can be sub­ject to ques­tion­able in­ter­pre­ta­tion to sup­port gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy and at the same time to de­ny this Sen­ate in­for­ma­tion to which it is le­git­i­mate­ly en­ti­tled."

Sen­ate pres­i­dent Dan­ny Mon­tano said he would rule next Tues­day on Mark's re­quest. Mark said that dur­ing the last ses­sion of Par­lia­ment in 2008, he had asked Mc­Don­ald to state (A) if her min­istry had pro­vid­ed fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance or award­ed schol­ar­ships to peo­ple de­sirous of study­ing lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly or in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. If so, Mark had sought from Mc­Don­ald (B1) a list of names of ben­e­fi­cia­ries for 2002 to 2007, (B2) the amount of fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to each and (B3 ) the names of in­sti­tu­tions in­volved. Mark said that Mc­Don­ald, on Ju­ly 1, 2008, had in­formed the Sen­ate that the rea­son she was un­able to an­swer the sec­ond seg­ments of the ques­tion was be­cause of the pro­vi­sions of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.

Mark not­ed that Mc­Don­ald had said the pro­vi­sions ex­empt­ed from dis­clo­sure, per­son­al in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to an in­di­vid­ual's ed­u­ca­tion, ed­u­ca­tion­al records, cur­rent ed­u­ca­tion­al sta­tus and fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions with the Min­istry to en­able pur­suit of stud­ies. How­ev­er, Mark point­ed to Mc­Don­ald's state­ment to the Low­er House last Fri­day when she ad­dressed the re­cent pub­li­ca­tion of de­tails of fi­nan­cial sup­port for per­sons. Mark not­ed that Mc­Don­ald had said: "None of those who sought fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance did so with the ex­pec­ta­tion that their per­son­al cir­cum­stances would have been ex­posed for pub­lic ridicule.

The Gov­ern­ment's ini­tial re­luc­tance to pro­vide the names was in­tend­ed to pre­vent pre­cise­ly such an oc­cur­rence. In our ear­li­er de­ci­sion, we sought to pro­tect the pri­va­cy of cit­i­zens who ap­proached the Gov­ern­ment for as­sis­tance." (sic) Mark al­leged that Mc­Don­ald "wil­ful­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­led the Sen­ate" when she in­formed the Sen­ate in Ju­ly 2008 that the rea­son she could not re­ply to Parts B1 and 2 of his ques­tion was be­cause of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.