Chester Sam­bran­co

The le­gal wran­glings with­in the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) have tak­en an­oth­er turn with claims that the ex­ec­u­tive il­le­gal­ly amend­ed the union’s con­sti­tu­tion to ex­tend the term of pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste past the re­tire­ment age of 60.

The PSA held a Spe­cial Gen­er­al Coun­cil and Spe­cial Con­fer­ence yes­ter­day af­ter it was or­dered to do so by High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad.

The union was tak­en to court by five mem­bers---Cur­tis Cuffie, Demetrius Har­ri­son, An­nisha Per­sad, Cur­tis Meade and Du­aine He­witt---and Jus­tice Seep­er­sad froze all its as­sets and on­ly al­lowed it to pay salaries.

How­ev­er, one of the claimants, Du­aine He­witt, said at yes­ter­day’s meet­ing the ex­ec­u­tive moved a mo­tion to amend the con­sti­tu­tion to al­low Bap­tiste to stay in the role of pres­i­dent af­ter he turns 60 on Jan­u­ary 11 next year.

He said based on the agen­da set out by the judge, there was sup­posed to be a dis­cus­sion with the Gen­er­al Coun­cil on the fill­ing of ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions.

“What the ex­ec­u­tive did was add an ad­di­tion­al item to the agen­da which is amend­ing the con­sti­tu­tion to al­low the pres­i­dent to go be­yond 60 years. That is what they did in breach of the court or­der,” he said.

He­witt claimed the Gen­er­al Coun­cil was not prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed as many mem­bers were not al­lowed in­to the vir­tu­al meet­ing. He added that what made it worse was how some of the mem­bers present were treat­ed when they at­tempt­ed to raise ob­jec­tions.

“When we had our hands raised, be­cause it was a vir­tu­al meet­ing, they re­fused to ac­knowl­edge our hands and when we un­mut­ed our mics they blocked us from com­ment­ing,” he com­plained.

He­witt raised se­ri­ous is­sues with the de­ci­sions tak­en at the vir­tu­al set­ting.

“With re­spect to democ­ra­cy you must know who your vot­ers are. We don’t know who the peo­ple in the vir­tu­al meet­ing are, whether they ex­ist, or whether is ghost,” he said.

He said based on the amend­ment Bap­tiste now stays in of­fice as pres­i­dent of the union un­til na­tion­al PSA elec­tions in De­cem­ber 2024.

“We will have to go back to court. This is a fla­grant, fla­grant breach of the court or­der,” he said.

He­witt said the mat­ter is sched­uled to go be­fore a judge on Jan­u­ary 6.

Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact PSA pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste on the claims were fu­tile.

The in­junc­tion grant­ed against the PSA on De­cem­ber 15 pro­hibits the union from dis­pos­ing of or deal­ing with or di­min­ish­ing the val­ue of any of the PSA as­sets, whether they are in or out­side T&T, whether in its own name or not and whether sole­ly or joint­ly owned, save and ex­cept to pay salaries of em­ploy­ees.

The in­junc­tion ap­plies to all of the PSA’s as­sets, in­clud­ing ac­counts at RBC, JMMB, Re­pub­lic Bank, Sco­tia­bank, Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion, Trin­to­plan In­vest­ment and Plipde­co, as well as four ve­hi­cles.

Four days lat­er, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered that the PSA be re­strained from hold­ing any gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ings, ex­cept meet­ings re­gard­ing the con­duct of sec­tion elec­tions.