An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Hours af­ter the polls opened for mem­bers to vote for a new T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) ex­ec­u­tive, a High Court judge grant­ed an in­ter­im in­junc­tion to one of the con­test­ing slates, halt­ing the process.

The sev­en-mem­ber team from Voic­es in Blue, led by Sgt Wen­dell War­rick, suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent­ed the elec­tion af­ter chal­leng­ing its le­git­i­ma­cy, over con­cerns about the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty of can­di­dates and the col­lec­tion of dues from mem­bers not cov­ered by the Po­lice Ser­vice Act.

Dur­ing the ex-parte mat­ter in cham­bers, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad heard con­cerns specif­i­cal­ly re­gard­ing the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty of As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Anand Rame­sar, who is con­test­ing for the post of pres­i­dent un­der Team E.Q.U.I.T.Y.

The emer­gency in­junc­tion brought an im­me­di­ate stop to the in­ter­nal elec­toral process and tem­porar­i­ly dis­qual­i­fied Rame­sar from con­tin­u­ing to run.

Ac­cord­ing to court doc­u­ments, Voic­es in Blue ar­gued that Rame­sar had al­ready served three con­sec­u­tive terms with­in the TTPSS­WA, which in­clud­ed two as pres­i­dent and one as sec­re­tary, ren­der­ing him in­el­i­gi­ble for fur­ther of­fice or vot­ing un­der the as­so­ci­a­tion’s rules.

In a re­lease, the group in­sist­ed, “This is not just about an elec­tion. This is about restor­ing the in­tegri­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion for all of­fi­cers who have been used, side­lined, and si­lenced for too long.”

They al­so ar­gued that spe­cial re­serve po­lice (SRPs), mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers and tran­sit po­lice of­fi­cers had been con­tribut­ing fi­nan­cial­ly to an as­so­ci­a­tion that was nev­er law­ful­ly de­signed to rep­re­sent them.

Voic­es in Blue said, “SRPs are not ap­point­ed un­der the Po­lice Ser­vice Act, yet have been made to pay dues and par­tic­i­pate in sys­tems that ex­clude them from lead­er­ship and de­ci­sion-mak­ing. Like­wise, mu­nic­i­pal of­fi­cers—falling un­der lo­cal gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ty—have been swept in­to a struc­ture with­out prop­er le­gal stand­ing or pro­tec­tions.”

The group, which in­cludes Ron­ny Lee Gopaul, Rox­anne Paul, Leah Mitchell-Samuel, Dar­rell Black­man, Men­sah Flem­ming and Dana Brown, al­leged that Rame­sar’s pitch to serve again was a di­rect vi­o­la­tion of the TTPSS­WA’s term lim­its.

Seep­er­sad ruled the TTPSS­WA had five days in which to dis­close the num­ber of SRPs and mu­nic­i­pal of­fi­cers cur­rent­ly list­ed as mem­bers; as well as the to­tal dues col­lect­ed from these two groups since their reg­is­tra­tion, and the le­gal ba­sis un­der which the monies were col­lect­ed.

In ad­di­tion, he al­so pro­hib­it­ed the TTPSS­WA from ac­cept­ing fresh dues from SRPs, mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers and tran­sit po­lice of­fi­cers, un­til to­day’s hear­ing, which is sched­uled to be­gin at 9.30 am.

Con­tact­ed last evening for a com­ment, TTPSS­WA pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son, con­firmed the elec­tion com­mit­tee had been locked in an emer­gency cau­cus meet­ing and a state­ment would be is­sued in due time.

Re­spond­ing to the in­junc­tion, Sgt Nisha Sookram-Loutan, who is con­test­ing the post of sec­re­tary un­der Team E.Q.U.I.T.Y, said they had sought le­gal coun­sel re­gard­ing the move for­ward.