To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett has sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to for­mer chief sec­re­tary and po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) To­ba­go Coun­cil An­cil Den­nis, de­mand­ing a pub­lic apol­o­gy. She has ac­cused Den­nis of mak­ing defam­a­to­ry state­ments on so­cial me­dia about ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion fund­ing.

But, Den­nis has stood by his so­cial me­dia post, say­ing he will not be apol­o­gis­ing. He said he too had his court clothes ironed and ready.

In the le­gal let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 12, Hack­ett’s at­tor­neys ac­cused Den­nis of spread­ing false claims about her han­dling of fi­nan­cial aid for To­ba­go’s uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents. It al­leged that Den­nis mis­led the pub­lic by sug­gest­ing Hack­ett failed to pro­vide as­sis­tance while mis­us­ing pub­lic funds.

The let­ter stat­ed that Den­nis’ com­ments, wide­ly shared on so­cial me­dia, por­trayed Hack­ett as ir­re­spon­si­ble and in­dif­fer­ent to stu­dents’ needs.

“These state­ments made by you, par­tic­u­lar­ly in para­graphs 2, 4, and 5, are un­true, ma­li­cious, and reck­less,” the let­ter said. It added that the THA has pro­vid­ed fi­nan­cial aid to all el­i­gi­ble stu­dents, ex­cept for 23 bur­saries still un­der re­view, 13 de­ferred bur­saries, and two grants await­ing pro­cess­ing.

Hack­ett’s at­tor­neys ar­gued that Den­nis could have ver­i­fied the facts by con­tact­ing the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search, and Tech­nol­o­gy (DERTECH) or the De­part­ment of Ad­vanced Train­ing and Ad­vi­so­ry Ser­vices (DATAS). The let­ter warned that Hack­ett would take le­gal ac­tion if Den­nis did not re­tract his state­ments and is­sue an apol­o­gy with­in sev­en days.

But Den­nis said he would not be back­ing down, call­ing the le­gal threat an at­tempt to si­lence crit­i­cism.

“Liv­ing in your house, try­ing to raise your fam­i­ly in a law-abid­ing man­ner, 8 o’clock in the morn­ing, bailiff call­ing you out your house to col­lect this rub­bish,” he wrote in re­sponse.

He in­sist­ed that his state­ments were fac­tu­al.

“My cour­t­house clothes pressed and ready, and I have cour­t­house ev­i­dence,” he claimed.

Den­nis said he would not apol­o­gise.

“Up to me, I’ll throw this let­ter in the garbage, but out of re­spect for our le­gal sys­tems, I’ve in­struct­ed my at­tor­neys to re­spond most ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.”

Den­nis al­so ac­cused the THA of in­tim­i­da­tion.

“This is an­oth­er at­tempt to muz­zle dis­sent and crit­i­cism, just like they ter­rorise, threat­en, and fire THA em­ploy­ees for sim­ply re­act­ing to so­cial me­dia posts that are crit­i­cal of them.”

Den­nis chal­lenged Hack­ett to re­spond to claims about a THA-con­nect­ed in­di­vid­ual re­ceiv­ing over $100,000 in fi­nan­cial aid for for­eign uni­ver­si­ty fees.

“It’s in­ter­est­ing that she did not re­spond to the claim about the favourite pro­pa­gan­dist re­ceiv­ing over $100,000 to pay for stud­ies at a for­eign uni­ver­si­ty,” he al­leged.

The for­mer chief sec­re­tary al­so de­nied blam­ing Hack­ett for in­fra­struc­ture projects.

He asked, “Where in my post did I say that Zia Hack­ett was re­spon­si­ble for the con­struc­tion of the Friend­ship Road? Is her name THA? Fool­ish much!”

Den­nis ar­gued that Hack­ett’s le­gal let­ter con­firmed that some stu­dents were still wait­ing for fund­ing.

“The Sec­re­tary ad­mit­ted through her at­tor­ney in this let­ter that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 stu­dents are await­ing sup­port from the THA but did not in­di­cate the ridicu­lous­ly long de­lays in ex­cess of a year in some in­stances, nor did she in­clude those ap­pli­ca­tions that were re­ject­ed for what­ev­er rea­son. Play­ing smart with fool­ish­ness.”