Dear Sir,

On Friday, the Honourable Leah Scott JP MP issued an op-ed in the form of a letter to the editor in The Royal Gazette headlined “Women must try to be allies, not enemies”.

The letter tried to discuss unity between women. Ironically, Ms Scott started and ended her article attacking another woman, radio host Sherri J.

It seemed as if Ms Scott took issue with allegations made by a third party about the radio host.

Interestingly, the MP did not reach out to Sherri J to speak to her directly about the issue. Instead, she decided to take to the daily newspaper to passively attack the credibility of a prominent member of the media.

What concerned many people was that our Junior Minister of Education blatantly plagiarised most of her letter from another article written for the Hello Beautiful website in 2010.

Leah Scott’s letter: “It has always amazed me that black women are each other’s biggest critics. We are the quickest to find each other’s faults, bring each other down, and pick, pick, pick at a sister until she has nothing left. After we have trod her down, then we step over her and say she isn’t worth anything.”

Hello Beautiful: “It has ALWAYS amazed me that black women are each other’s biggest critics. We are the quickest to bring each other down, find each others faults and nitpick at a sister until she has nothing left, nothing left to give, and then we step over her and call her worthless.”

I’ve included but one example of the plagiarism. I must thank Khali Shakir for pointing out this ethical violation.

When I started a Facebook thread that called out the Junior Minister of Education on her plagiarism, she tried to deny and diminish her act.

Ms Scott said: “Yup, Eron. I incorporated some of her thoughts in my letter. I used my own words. Plagiarism is using someone’s work word for word without giving credit to the source.”

The MP could not be serious, right? She was trying to justify the plagiarism because she removed certain words and changed certain other words. This clearly indicated what her original motives were.

When it was suggested that she was grasping at straws trying to defend what she had done, she then stated: “Not attempting to duck it at all. I have said that I should have better cited my sources.”

However, Ms Scott did not cite anything at all. Not one quotation mark was included in the letter. The tone the letter conveyed, the fact she admitted to changing some of the words, and the fact that her name was signed at the bottom, all suggest that she intended to give the impression that this was her work.

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive.”

I don’t know what occurred overnight, but the following day she sent this: “Eron. Thank you for initiating this thread. I appreciate you bringing to my attention to giving credit where credit is due.

“I am generally very cautious about things like this. I therefore I would like to cite hellobeautiful.com as a source of reference and inspiration for my letter.

“I apologise for the unintentional and inadvertent omission of citing this reference at the time of publication, as this was completely by accident. I no way intended this to happen.”

The Junior Minister of Education’s apology for plagiarism was riddled with grammatical errors and falls woefully short of being sincere.

As one commenter put it: ‘Citing a reference after you’ve been caught out is like trying to pay for a candy bar after you’ve been caught stealing because you ‘intended’ to pay for it.”

What about the young people? It saddens many to see how certain members of this Government seemingly allow themselves to be used to do and say certain things for the sole purpose of public appearance, just to be able to say they’ve said something.

Why sell themselves so short?

What example do we send to our young people when a Government MP and Junior Minister of Education resorts to such desperate measures as copying and pasting others’ work and claiming it as their own?

As Junior Minister of Education, MP Scott must be held to high standards as she has the attention of the youth.

To act in this manner is distasteful and disingenuous, in my humble opinion. Young people, we must learn from this embarrassing saga. Integrity and honesty is important.

We must never let the fear of a blank page, or the eagerness for media spotlight, push us to the fraud of plagiarism.

“Rather fail with honour than succeed by fraud.” Sophocles.

ERON HILL