As controversy continues to swirl around why the Home Affairs Ministry Permanent Secretary had her phone seized by US authorities and US visa revoked, the government now has to defend political work being done by a senior public servant when it had publicly frowned on such practices.
On Wednesday President Irfaan Ali had disclosed that Mae Toussaint Jr. Thomas was on business for the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP) when she was called in for a secondary inspection at the Miami International Airport in the US on April 8th while on her way to China.
Yesterday at his press conference at Freedom House, PPP General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo was questioned about the Toussaint Jr. Thomas incident.
Asked by Stabroek News to explain what the training mission in China was about, Jagdeo said: “Usually all the parties I think, I saw people from India going from both sides, the PNC and PPP, and they were young people. We have offers for young people to go on these like tours of these countries and to learn a bit about policy making and what’s happening in this country. So political parties routinely get those offers from the international community or the big countries. And so that was what Miss Thomas went for, that was what the training about”.
Asked how she was being allowed to do political work when she was a Permanent Secretary, Jagdeo said: “As you may know, she is a member of the People’s Progressive Party, so if she gets released from government responsibility, basically she went on a party activity… Even when the MP’s from the APNU went recently to India along with some other young people, they didn’t stop being MP’s but they got released, it’s simple. People have multiple existences …and they have particular responsibilities like the government responsibilities”.
MPs cannot be compared to Permanent Secretaries in the context of these visits. The PPP/C government had sacked the EPA Director Dr Vincent Adams on the ground that he was a member of the AFC. That argument could now apply to Toussaint Jr. Thomas.
The administration remains under pressure for not disclosing Toussaint Jr. Thomas’ woes in Miami particularly since the secondary inspection and the seizure of the phone would suggest that US Customs and Border Protection authorities have serious concerns about her activities.
