Bo­bie-Lee Dixon

The To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple's (TOP) fourth An­nu­al Par­ty Con­fer­ence came to a row­dy and abrupt end yes­ter­day with­out a sin­gle vote be­ing cast. The par­ty is one of the coali­tion part­ners in the rul­ing Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship.Dur­ing the con­fer­ence there were heat­ed ex­changes about the par­ty's vot­ing process and as ten­sions es­ca­lat­ed, the me­dia, who had been in­vit­ed to at­tend the event, were asked to leave the con­fer­ence room of the Rovanel's Re­sort where the con­fer­ence was held.

TOP po­lit­i­cal leader Ash­worth Jack lat­er told re­porters that sev­er­al peo­ple at the con­fer­ence felt that an elec­tion should not take place al­though there had been a High Court rul­ing giv­ing the go-ahead to hold the elec­tion us­ing the del­e­gate vot­ing sys­tem."There is a bunch of peo­ple who are adamant that the par­ty should not have elec­tions to­day," he said.

"I left the meet­ing and by the time I got back it was very row­dy, so I thought as the po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty there was too much to­ing and fro­ing, so I moved a mo­tion for the con­fer­ence be ad­journed to a date to be fixed so that we can have some fur­ther dis­cus­sions on the mat­ter."The TOP leader said he con­sid­ered the mat­ter to be an in­di­ca­tor of a healthy de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process.

"I hold no ill will or mal­ice against any­one...I think in or­gan­i­sa­tions there are go­ing to be tur­bu­lent times so I ac­cept that some­times peo­ple are go­ing to be pas­sion­ate about stuff," he said."Democ­ra­cy is alive and well and peo­ple must be al­lowed to ex­press their views even if they do not agree with you."For me that is im­por­tant. I en­cour­age it in my fam­i­ly so any or­gan­i­sa­tion that I am the head of must have the same kind of op­por­tu­ni­ty for ex­pres­sion."

The par­ty's ex­ec­u­tive is ex­pect­ed to meet to­day at its head­quar­ters in Scar­bor­ough to de­ter­mine the way for­ward and set a new date for the in­ter­nal elec­tion.On Fri­day, two mem­bers of the TOP filed an in­junc­tion in the High Court to stop the elec­tion.How­ev­er, Jus­tice Ju­dith Jones yes­ter­day ruled that the elec­tion of of­fi­cers can con­tin­ue as sched­uled un­der the del­e­gate vot­ing sys­tem.

At­tor­ney Om Lal­la is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to TOP's gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ali­cia Ed­wards on be­half of mem­bers Glad­stone Solomon and Trevor Gar­diner, seek­ing post­pone­ment of the elec­tion to al­low for prop­er im­ple­men­ta­tion of a one-man, one-vote sys­tem.Lal­la's let­ter stat­ed: "Should you fail to ac­cede our re­quest we will have no al­ter­na­tive but to seek le­gal re­dress from the High Court."

Com­ment­ing on the le­gal ac­tion, Jack said: "One of those two mem­bers on­ly ap­plied for mem­ber­ship about six months ago. When these things hap­pen you have to re­vis­it your screen­ing process to en­sure that those ap­ply­ing for mem­ber­ship are the best kinds of peo­ple for the or­gan­i­sa­tion who have the or­gan­i­sa­tion's best in­ter­est at heart."Solomon told the T&T Guardian that he and Gar­diner filed the in­junc­tion be­cause they felt the elec­tion was not keep­ing with the con­sti­tu­tion.

Jack, in a me­dia re­lease, lat­er reaf­firmed the par­ty's com­mit­ment to its mem­ber­ship to the one-man, one-vote sys­tem, which was agreed up­on at the TOP's last an­nu­al con­fer­ence, to en­sure greater democ­ra­cy in its gov­er­nance."To this end, the par­ty in­tends to vig­or­ous­ly de­fend the le­gal pro­ceed­ings in­sti­tut­ed by the two mem­bers. The par­ty is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed in these pro­ceed­ings by at­tor­ney-at-law Michael Rooplal," the re­lease said.

Court or­der

The court or­der hand­ed down by Jus­tice Jones stat­ed:

1) The de­fen­dants, (TOP), are re­strained from pro­ceed­ing with the elec­tion of its ex­ec­u­tive arm sched­uled for to­day (yes­ter­day), save and ex­cept in ac­cor­dance with the del­e­gate sys­tem of vot­ing pre­scribed by Ar­ti­cle 16.01 of the con­sti­tu­tion of the TOP and the con­ven­tion adopt­ed by it in this re­gard, un­til the de­ter­mi­na­tion of this ac­tion or fur­ther or­der.

2) The claimants un­der­take to file a claim form on June 23, 2013.

3) Per­mis­sion is grant­ed for the claimants to file and serve the state­ment of case by June 17.

4) The claimants un­der­take to serve filed copies of the in­ter­im ap­pli­ca­tions to­geth­er with the sup­port­ing af­fi­davits of Glad­stone Solomon and Trevor Gar­diner on June 3.

It was al­so fur­ther or­dered that the in­junc­tion be re­turned on June 6