Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Af­ter be­ing elect­ed the first woman to lead the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus will be bring­ing an end to her tenure as pres­i­dent of the union.

She made the star­tling an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day that she will not be seek­ing re-elec­tion in the No­vem­ber 25 elec­tion for mem­bers of the union's ex­ec­u­tive af­ter be­ing the longest-serv­ing elect­ed of­fi­cer of the PSA with more than 20 years' ex­pe­ri­ence. Bap­tiste-Primus has opt­ed to throw her sup­port be­hind the cam­paign of the as­so­ci­a­tion's 1st vice-pres­i­dent Stephen Thomas and The Re­form­ers team. Ac­cord­ing to Bap­tiste-Primus, Team Re­form­ers had a to­tal of more than 200 years in the field of in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions.

They will be vy­ing for 13 posts in­clud­ing those of pres­i­dent, 1st vice pres­i­dent, 2nd vice-pres­i­dent, trea­sur­er and gen­er­al sec­re­tary. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira has de­scribed the de­ci­sion by Bap­tiste-Primus to bow out of PSA's elec­toral race as a "time for some­one else." "How do I re­act? I do not know if there is any par­tic­u­lar re­ac­tion. I wish her the best. I sup­pose if you want to put it in a gen­der ba­sis, I am very proud of her reach­ing where she reached and I thought that, re­al­ly, she did an ex­cel­lent job be­fore I came in­to the realm of pol­i­tics," Tesheira said in an in­ter­view af­ter yes­ter­day's sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

"I have to say I ad­mired her strength, I ad­mired her ar­tic­u­la­tion and there­fore all good things have to come to an end. I would not say that it came as a shock. There are sea­sons for every­one. I sup­pose that she had a long reign and a long time and there­fore I sup­pose it is time for some­one else." Tesheira praised Bap­tiste-Primus for mak­ing a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions in T&T.