By Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The An­ju­man Sun­nat-ul-Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA) is fac­ing the threat of High Court ac­tion weeks be­fore its No­vem­ber 29 gen­er­al elec­tions, as nine af­fil­i­at­ed ja­maats chal­lenge what they de­scribe as an at­tempt to dis­en­fran­chise mem­bers. The dis­pute has al­so raised ques­tions about the Elec­tions Com­mit­tee af­ter three of its six orig­i­nal mem­bers re­signed.

In a six-page pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter dat­ed No­vem­ber 2, at­tor­ney-at-law Shereen N Mo­hammed, rep­re­sent­ing the nine ja­maats, called on AS­JA to re­verse its de­ci­sion to down­grade sev­er­al mosques’ sta­tus, dis­solve the ex­ist­ing Elec­tions Com­mit­tee and sus­pend the elec­tions un­til the dis­putes are re­solved.

The let­ter, ad­dressed to AS­JA Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Rahi­mool Ho­sein and com­mit­tee chair­man Asauph Ghany, al­leges pro­ce­dur­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, breach­es of nat­ur­al jus­tice and ac­tions that could in­flu­ence the elec­tion out­come.

At is­sue is a de­ci­sion al­leged­ly tak­en by AS­JA’s Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive to down­grade at least 17 ja­maats from Af­fil­i­ate to As­so­ciate sta­tus. The let­ter ar­gues that the changes could af­fect mem­bers’ abil­i­ty to vote or con­test po­si­tions.

The le­gal chal­lenge comes amid in­ter­nal di­vi­sions, with doc­u­ments ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia rais­ing con­cerns about can­di­date screen­ing, al­leged in­tim­i­da­tion and the com­mit­tee’s in­de­pen­dence.

At­tor­ney-at-law Keon Beck­les was the first com­mit­tee mem­ber to re­sign, on Oc­to­ber 8. In a pub­lic state­ment, AS­JA said he had iden­ti­fied a “le­gal is­sue of in­ter­pre­ta­tion” and with­drew to pre­serve his re­li­gious prin­ci­ples, pro­fes­sion­al stand­ing and moral in­tegri­ty. The state­ment did not spec­i­fy the is­sue. AS­JA said the com­mit­tee re­mained prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed and able to car­ry out its du­ties.

On Oc­to­ber 27, two more mem­bers, Nizam Rahim and Steve Nazir Khada­roo, re­signed, leav­ing three of the orig­i­nal six. In cor­re­spon­dence dat­ed Oc­to­ber 20 and 26, Rahim al­leged that meet­ing min­utes had not been cir­cu­lat­ed de­spite re­quests and that com­mit­tee mem­bers were de­nied ac­cess to pre­lim­i­nary and fi­nal lists of el­i­gi­ble del­e­gates. He said on­ly se­lect­ed of­fi­cials com­mu­ni­cat­ed with AS­JA ad­min­is­tra­tors about elec­toral records, rais­ing con­cerns about trans­paren­cy.

Rahim al­so ob­ject­ed to the pro­posed can­di­date-screen­ing pack­age, say­ing the com­mit­tee had not agreed on its con­tents and should not is­sue the form. In a lat­er let­ter, he al­leged a heat­ed con­fronta­tion at an Oc­to­ber 25 meet­ing af­ter he de­clined to read aloud a com­plaint he had al­ready cir­cu­lat­ed.

Khada­roo cit­ed crit­i­cism of the com­mit­tee on so­cial me­dia, defam­a­to­ry pub­li­ca­tions and re­peat­ed threats of lit­i­ga­tion. He said he would con­sid­er serv­ing again if as­sured he would not face un­war­rant­ed per­son­al at­tacks.

The pre-ac­tion let­ter ar­gues that the com­mit­tee was im­prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed af­ter the res­ig­na­tions and lacked au­thor­i­ty to con­tin­ue mak­ing elec­toral de­ci­sions. It al­so ques­tions the tim­ing of can­di­date-screen­ing arrange­ments.

The com­mit­tee an­nounced on Oc­to­ber 26 that the elec­tion would be held on Sun­day, No­vem­ber 29. The le­gal cor­re­spon­dence asks AS­JA to re­verse the mem­ber­ship-sta­tus changes, re­view the com­mit­tee’s com­po­si­tion and post­pone the vote un­til the out­stand­ing con­cerns are ad­dressed. The doc­u­ments re­viewed do not con­firm any change to the elec­tion date.

Ho­sein con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that the mat­ter is be­fore AS­JA’s at­tor­neys and said the as­so­ci­a­tion would not com­ment un­til fur­ther ad­vised.