SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

While in­cum­bent Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke was busy yes­ter­day cel­e­brat­ing the win of his slate, the Game Chang­ers, in Mon­day’s PSA elec­tions, at least one of his chal­lengers says they are still await­ing re­sults.

On Wednes­day evening, the fol­low­ing mes­sage was post­ed on the Game Chang­ers Face­book page: “Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent, Mr Wat­son Duke is pleased to thank all PSA Mem­bers who sup­port­ed the GameChang­ers team in the PSA Elec­tions which was held on Mon­day 14th De­cem­ber 2020. GameChang­ers won PSA Elec­tions 2020 with a land­slide vic­to­ry with 1200 more votes than the clos­est ri­val.”

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Duke boast­ed that he had got­ten more votes than any of his con­tenders.

“Let me put it this way, my vot­er turnout was high, the last time we won the elec­tions, I got al­most 2,000 votes, 1900 and some­thing, this time is al­most 1,800 votes so 200 votes that is not bad,” Duke said.

But the leader of the Labour War­riors, Ian Mur­ray, told Guardian Me­dia there were no re­sults for him or his team to cel­e­brate or mourn.

At just af­ter 5 pm on Thurs­day, Mur­ray said he had re­ceived no re­sults for him­self or his slate.

“The on­ly re­sults we have got­ten so far is the re­sult telling us what Wat­son Duke get, we haven’t got­ten the re­sults of the elec­tion as yet, the on­ly can­di­date that knows how much peo­ple vote for them is on Wat­son Duke team, no­body else on any oth­er slate has got­ten any re­sults from the elec­tion of­fi­cer as yet,” Mur­ray said.

He said the oth­er slates were not told of the dif­fer­ence in votes be­tween their can­di­dates and Duke’s.

He said the elec­tion was plagued by a myr­i­ad of is­sues.

“We have re­ceived a myr­i­ad of com­plaints from mem­bers all over the place that they were not able to ex­er­cise their fran­chise, they were turned away from the polls, we had a lot of is­sues.”

Mur­ray said he would re­serve fur­ther com­ment un­til he had the full elec­tion re­sults.

Guardian Me­dia al­so tried con­tact­ing Con­cerned Pub­lic Of­fi­cers leader Cur­tis Cuffie and Team Sen­tinel’s leader, Nixon Cal­len­der for com­ment but calls to their cell­phones went unan­swered. 

Mean­while, Duke said the union is suf­fer­ing from a shrink­ing mem­ber­ship.

For this, he laid the blame square­ly on the shoul­ders of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

Duke said that since he took charge of the PSA, it’s mem­ber­ship has grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

But he said Im­bert’s tough eco­nom­ic poli­cies saw pub­lic ser­vants drop­ping out of the as­so­ci­a­tion in frus­tra­tion.

“For the first time in our life, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter comes out on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion and tells an in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence, “Look I have raised gas three times and no one ri­ot, I am go­ing to raise it again.”

It’s the first time a fi­nance min­is­ter came out and said ‘look, ze­ro per cent, ze­ro per cent, ze­ro per cent, I might give them one per cent.’ It’s the first time a fi­nance min­is­ter came out and said ‘look, don’t come to my ta­ble at all’, it’s the first time and so it is very dif­fi­cult for per­sons to see through the rain, to see through the dark­ness,” Duke said.

He al­so blamed the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, say­ing mem­bers have be­come men­tal­ly fa­tigued.

As he boast­ed of re­tain­ing the pres­i­dent gen­er­al port­fo­lio of the PSA, Duke said his re-elec­tion is a ‘re­sus­ci­ta­tion of hope.’

“Hope has been re­sus­ci­tat­ed, (it) has been brought back to life, giv­en the fact, I would say un­der my tenure I am go­ing to re­sus­ci­tate and bring back the ne­go­ti­a­tions that were go­ing to dogs.”

He said de­spite the mem­bers’ grim out­look, new mem­bers are still ea­ger to sign up for the PSA.

“Every month we add mem­bers to the PSA, every month and the ma­jor­i­ty of those mem­bers are vol­un­tary, we have gone to places like Mt Hope and Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, we have had over one day, hun­dreds of doc­tors join­ing, peo­ple are fill­ing out the form, peo­ple are ex­cit­ed to be led by the PSA. If you know the PSA can be deemed as the North Amer­i­ca of trade unions right now, the largest de­mo­c­ra­t­ic union in the coun­try.”