An­to­nia De Fre­itas has been de­clared as the du­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA).

She will be of­fi­cial­ly in­stalled and pre­sent­ed with her in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment on No­vem­ber 4, dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at TTUTA’s Head Of­fice, Curepe.

The of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment was made by TTUTA’s Elec­tions Com­mis­sion Chair­man, Man­choon Sook­nanan and Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Ed­ward Ram­sumair late yes­ter­day.

This is the first time that a woman has been elect­ed to lead the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The of­fi­cial news fol­lowed a re­count which had been re­quest­ed by her clos­est con­tender – prin­ci­pal at the Up­per Cara­pichaima Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School, Nir­mala Chinebas-Din­di­al.

De Fre­itas won Tues­day’s ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion af­ter se­cur­ing a to­tal of 3,623 votes – which was 297 more than Chinebas-Din­di­al gar­nered at 3,326.

Mean­while, a sec­ond re­quest for a re­count was re­ceived by Shari­da Sagar-Ram­nar­ine who went up against Dar­ren Lee Him for the post of third vice pres­i­dent.

In­di­cat­ing there had been a dif­fer­ence of about 700 votes be­tween the two, Ram­sumair said Sagar-Ram­nar­ine con­ced­ed very ear­ly in­to yes­ter­day’s re­count.

Be­gin­ning the re­count around 10.30 am, the elec­tion com­mit­tee took just around four and a half hours be­fore Chinebas-Din­di­al al­so con­ced­ed de­feat.

Both Sook­nanan and Ram­sumair con­firmed Tues­day’s elec­tion had been smooth for the most part, but ad­mit­ted there were cer­tain pro­ce­dures the Com­mit­tee would have to re­view mov­ing for­ward.

Ex­tend­ing con­grat­u­la­tions to De Fre­itas on the his­toric win, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion de­scribed it as par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy be­cause she is the first fe­male to lead the As­so­ci­a­tion.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia who is him­self a for­mer Pres­i­dent of TTUTA, not­ed that De Fre­itas was one of the three women vy­ing for the Pres­i­den­cy and com­ment­ed that it, “was on­ly a mat­ter of time” be­fore a woman took the reins of lead­er­ship.

Gar­cia al­so ex­pressed grat­i­tude to out­go­ing pres­i­dent Lyns­ley Doo­d­hai, who it was felt had served with dis­tinc­tion.

The min­istry ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the cor­dial and pro­duc­tive re­la­tion­ship it has al­ways en­joyed with the As­so­ci­a­tion, would con­tin­ue to thrive un­der De Fre­itas’ stew­ard­ship.

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment, De Fre­itas ex­pressed grat­i­tude to every­one for sup­port­ing her as she said, “I was not anx­ious about the re­count but I am glad the process went smooth­ly.”

Ea­ger to hit the ground run­ning, De Fre­itas said while she is still di­gest­ing the good news – she is look­ing for­ward to en­sur­ing that TTUTA’s work and the lega­cy it is found­ed on, con­tin­ues to grow from strength to strength.