Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al has called on the Prime Min­is­ter to say whether a se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial was ever dis­qual­i­fied from pur­su­ing a Mas­ter’s pro­gramme at a ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tion.

Speak­ing dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) vir­tu­al meet­ing on Mon­day night, Lutch­me­di­al said this is­sue was first raised by the then-Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment in 2014.

Lutch­me­di­al was ad­dress­ing the le­gal ef­forts of Youth De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings to stop her from talk­ing about his pend­ing po­lit­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tions over al­leged fi­nan­cial mis­con­duct.

Cum­mings’ ap­pli­ca­tion be­fore High Court Judge Na­dia Kan­ga­loo was dis­missed last Fri­day. He took le­gal ac­tion af­ter Lutch­me­di­al read the con­tents of a TTPS Spe­cial Branch in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to his busi­ness deal­ings on May 5.

On Mon­day night, Lutch­me­di­al said the Gov­ern­ment was be­ing hyp­o­crit­i­cal with its whistle­blow­er leg­is­la­tion, as Cum­mings had sought to gag her.

“Mr Cum­mings, I want to tell you some­thing you can­not shut me up,” Lutch­me­di­al said.

She went on to quote Cum­mings’ af­fi­davit for his law­suit against her.

“He men­tioned some­thing here when he went to get his in­junc­tion, he said: ‘The na­ture of my po­si­tion re­quires the high­est de­gree of trust and con­fi­dence to be main­tained in the man­age­ment of pub­lic funds re­ceived, to car­ry on my role in pro­vid­ing ser­vices to peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Lutch­me­di­al said.

She said Cum­mings’ state­ment re­mind­ed her of an is­sue raised by the UNC in 2014 when then-op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced his slate.

“And they were ask­ing whether or not some­one en­rolled in his team was dis­qual­i­fied from a ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tion for pla­gia­rism? Well, tonight I want to ask the ques­tion, Kei­th Row­ley, did you ever in­ves­ti­gate that al­le­ga­tion? Have you ever found out who is the per­son?” Lutch­me­di­al asked.

She said this was an im­por­tant ques­tion for the Gov­ern­ment to an­swer.

And al­though she did not name the se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial, Lutch­me­di­al dropped some not-so-sub­tle hints dur­ing the meet­ing.

Guardian Me­dia sent sev­er­al ques­tions to Lutch­me­di­al, ask­ing her to share the doc­u­ments she re­ferred to in her ad­dress.

How­ev­er, she de­clined to do so, say­ing she will wait un­til Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­sponds.

She said she be­lieves those who serve in pub­lic life should be an ex­am­ple to the na­tion’s youth.

Lutch­me­di­al said aca­d­e­m­ic dis­hon­esty was a se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tion and the pub­lic de­serves to know whether any serv­ing se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial was dis­barred from their post­grad­u­ate stud­ies as a re­sult of pla­gia­rism.

“I call up­on the PM to say whether he is aware of this? Whether he chose to ig­nore it like the Spe­cial Branch re­port be­cause he isn’t sat­is­fied that there was ev­i­dence?” Lutch­me­di­al asked.

No re­sponse from of­fi­cial

Guardian Me­dia was able to con­firm from a source at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine cam­pus that a cur­rent gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial was dis­qual­i­fied from com­plet­ing a Mas­ters of Sci­ence in Gov­ern­ment.

This news­pa­per reached out to the pur­port­ed of­fi­cial but got no re­sponse to calls and mes­sages sent via cell­phone.

The source con­firmed the se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial was dis­qual­i­fied on the grounds of pla­gia­rism af­ter en­rolling in the post­grad­u­ate pro­gramme in 2008.

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