Ali­cia Llanos

Em­bat­tled Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion leader Wat­son Duke and his sup­port­ers yes­ter­day fired back at in­ter­nal crit­ics. A day af­ter a tense sit­u­a­tion at PSA's Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters and the lock­ing out of for­mer Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Oral Saun­ders, Duke's loy­al­ists came for­ward to pledge sup­port. First Vice Pres­i­dent Rosan­na Robin­son said Thurs­day's protest "amazed" mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive, who ful­ly sup­port Duke. Robin­son al­so in­sist­ed that Saun­ders had re­signed.

There were re­ports that Saun­ders was re­lieved of his du­ties af­ter Duke re­port­ed­ly re­ceived a res­ig­na­tion by text mes­sage. Saun­ders de­nied send­ing in any res­ig­na­tion. He in­sist­ed that he "nev­er fur­nished Mr Duke with a let­ter of res­ig­na­tion" and the text list­ed fi­nan­cial ob­jec­tions and con­cerns. On Thurs­day, Saun­ders was joined by some mem­bers of PSA's Gen­er­al Coun­cil, who claimed Duke had breached the as­so­ci­a­tion's con­sti­tu­tion by us­ing the text mes­sage as an of­fi­cial let­ter of res­ig­na­tion.

Saun­ders said he and Duke had locked horns over con­cerns re­lat­ing to fi­nances. He al­leged that there was mis­spending with the use of PSA's cred­it card. Saun­ders de­scribed Duke as "a dic­ta­tor" and "a run­away horse," who de­lib­er­ate­ly over­stepped the gen­er­al coun­cil's au­thor­i­ty. But yes­ter­day, Robin­son re­butted the claims. She said a text mes­sage was a for­mal­ly ac­cept­ed form of writ­ing and the PSA's con­sti­tu­tion did not re­quire a sig­na­ture from some­one send­ing in a res­ig­na­tion.

She said the res­ig­na­tion to per­mit Saun­ders to re­sign was made by both Duke and the ex­ec­u­tive. Robin­son al­so de­nied the claims about mis­use of the as­so­ci­a­tion cred­it card. Duke and his ex­ec­u­tive were elect­ed some six months ago, to re­place a team head­ed by long-stand­ing Pres­i­dent Jen­n­fi­er Bap­tiste-Primus.