Af­ter 16 years at the helm of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW), James Lam­bert is no longer the union’s pres­i­dent gen­er­al.

Lam­bert was re­placed by his first Deputy Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al Christo­pher Streete.

The union held its Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive Elec­tions on Mon­day. Yes­ter­day, elec­tions su­per­vi­sor Lu­na Wright an­nounced that Christo­pher Streete is now Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al-Elect along with a new ex­ec­u­tive.

The an­nounce­ment led to a Car­ni­val-like at­mos­phere at the union’s hall at Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day evening as union mem­bers gath­ered to sup­port the new lead­er­ship.

Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al-Elect Streete said his first pri­or­i­ty will be to con­duct a foren­sic au­dit.

“Even though I was the first Deputy Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al, I still don’t have any knowl­edge of the fi­nan­cial state of this or­gan­i­sa­tion—none what­so­ev­er. That’s why one of the first things we plan to do is ini­ti­ate a foren­sic au­dit of the union’s ac­counts. This au­dit will give us a clear sense of where we stand. While we can’t pre­dict the out­come, we be­lieve it’s a nec­es­sary step for mov­ing for­ward,” Streete said.

He al­so said there will be ini­tia­tives aimed at strength­en­ing the union.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained pre­lim­i­nary elec­tion re­sults show­ing in­cum­bent Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al James Lam­bert with 1,981 votes, while Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al-Elect Christo­pher Streete re­ceived 2,329 votes.

The new ex­ec­u­tive will be sworn in to­day. The Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al-Elect Streete ex­plained the rea­son for the de­lay.

“We faced a small chal­lenge. Ac­cord­ing to the union’s rules, if no chal­lenge is raised by 2 pm on the day fol­low­ing the elec­tion, the elec­tion su­per­vi­sor would pro­ceed to in­stall the new ex­ec­u­tive. How­ev­er, the elec­tion su­per­vi­sor and her team were un­able to com­plete the fi­nal count by that dead­line, so the oth­er teams didn’t re­ceive the re­sults on time.”

“In con­ver­sa­tion with her, we agreed it would be fair to give the oth­er teams the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­view the re­sults and, if nec­es­sary, raise any ob­jec­tions or chal­lenges. So, we agreed to sched­ule the in­stal­la­tion of of­fi­cers for 10 am to­mor­row, Wednes­day,” he ex­plained.

Out­go­ing Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al Lam­bert was at the hall yes­ter­day, but opt­ed not to speak with the me­dia.

The Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW), formed in 1967, is one of the largest trade unions in Trinidad and To­ba­go.