Chastanet
DNO - The Dominica Labour Party has accused leader of the United Workers Party of plagiarizing the speech of his colleague, Allen Chastanet of the St. Lucia United Workers Party.
But Chastanet has disagreed.
The matter was made public on the Next Level Program on privately-owned Kairi FM on the weekend.
During the program, senior counsel, Tony Astaphan accused Linton of “speech stealing.”
“Someone who is bankrupt of ideas has no place in the race to lead the country, our nation forward,” he said. “What we have said in the past that the prime minister has access to a number of persons who write speeches for him. But the content of the speeches come from him and are approved by him and they represent his philosophy, his direction and he does not go to a text book or the speech of another political leader to steal an idea and to claim that it is his. He has never done that. But this is what we have. We don’t have speech writing for Linton, we have speech stealing by Linton.”
A number of documents have been cited which allegedly pointed to Linton using quotes from a speech delivered by Chastanet. The documents include Linton’s inaugural speech in Castle Bruce on September 1 2013, Chastanet’s inaugural speech as leader of the UWP in St. Lucia on August 7, 2013 and a reflection by Linton which was published on Dominica News Online.
But Chastanet told DNO on Tuesday morning that he doesn’t consider the matter plagiarism because both he and Linton share similar ideas, philosophies and visions for their respective countries.
“I’ve known Linton for some time now and we just happened to be political leaders of sister parties,” he stated. “We have shared ideas and have assisted each other … so it won’t be untoward to believe that some of the concepts that we have in our documents are very similar.”
He said both he and Linton have discussed the things they want for their countries on many occasions
“Lennox and I have had many discussions about the visions of where we want to to take our countries,” Chastanet said. “We find ourselves sharing similar positions and we share the same values…”
Based on their shared value, he said he has no problem with Linton using some of his ideas, and the same the other way around.
“I don’t have any issues with it,” he stated.
As a matter of fact, Chastanet said he is proud of Linton using some of his words.
“It did not happen by accident,” he stated. “I am very proud of what words he used over there and equally proud of what works he has been able to achieve.”