Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Il­le­git­i­mate lead­er­ship and un­reg­is­tered mem­bers. These are the claims brought against the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of T&T (ASTT) by the group's for­mer pres­i­dent Dhanoo Sookoo who served for 13 years. It is al­so why she be­lieves the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al needs to in­ter­vene. How­ev­er, in­cum­bent pres­i­dent Daryl Ram­per­sad de­nies the claims, say­ing Sookoo is mis­tak­en.

Both pres­i­dents clashed briefly dur­ing the ASTT's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing at the Bon Air West Com­mu­ni­ty Fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day when Sookoo, sit­ting in the crowd, stood up to raise her con­cerns. Af­ter sev­er­al back-and-forths be­tween her­self and Ram­per­sad, Sookoo left the meet­ing.

"I am mak­ing a call to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go, who is the guardian of the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety's con­sti­tu­tion, the Agri­cul­ture So­ci­ety Act chap­ter 63:01. This mat­ter, this is a con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis," Sookoo told Guardian Me­dia who caught up with her out­side.

Daryl Rampersad, President of the Agricultural Society of Trinidad and Tobago, asks Dhanoo Sookoo to leave the meeting peacefully. At right, secretary of the ASTT, Vashti Persad Ramdhin.

VASHTI SINGH

"There is need, ur­gent­ly, for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go to in­ter­vene in this process and bring some lev­el of san­i­ty. Ob­vi­ous­ly this group of, as some­one termed them, lit­tle chil­dren don't have a clue as to what they're do­ing."

Sookoo said the so­ci­ety's board was il­le­git­i­mate since Jan­u­ary 2022. She said the High Court or­dered that last year's vote be stopped un­til the ap­pli­ca­tion for ju­di­cial re­view was heard and de­ter­mined by the judge. The ap­pli­ca­tion was filed over ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the elec­tion process–more specif­i­cal­ly, the va­lid­i­ty of the mem­bers/vot­ers.

"I in­formed him (Ram­per­sad) be­fore the 30th of Jan­u­ary (2022), he needs to call a gen­er­al meet­ing and get a man­date from the mem­ber­ship to car­ry on af­ter the 30th of Jan­u­ary which they have not done. That would have le­git­imised them to car­ry on with an AGM of 2023," she said.

She said there were al­so many "mem­bers" at the meet­ing yes­ter­day who are il­le­git­i­mate as they are not fi­nan­cial mem­bers. This is why, she said, every­thing vot­ed on at yes­ter­day's meet­ing is null and void. How­ev­er, Ram­per­sad said steps were tak­en to en­sure that the meet­ing was le­git­i­mate.

"The act of the so­ci­ety states that we have to car­ry for­ward the an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing in the month of Jan­u­ary which is what we are do­ing here. How­ev­er, I can­not go against what is dis­cussed in the courts, in the High Court of Trinidad and To­ba­go," he said.

Fur­ther­more, he said this was ad­dressed by hav­ing the man­age­ment cast their votes.

"The list­ing of the so­ci­ety is be­fore the courts now there­fore the mem­ber­ship is un­able to vote on cer­tain mat­ters right. How­ev­er, to close this event to­day, to ac­cept and fi­nalise and seal to­day's AGM, what you saw hap­pen­ing is that the com­mit­tee of man­age­ment are the on­ly in­di­vid­u­als that re­main with vot­ing rights in the so­ci­ety and these are the in­di­vid­u­als that vot­ed to­day to seal and adopt at the end of the AGM to­day, all the re­ports that were read out to­day," he said.

"So we are fol­low­ing and we are with­in prop­er guide­lines of the Agri­cul­ture So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go."