Derek Achong

Po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj has failed in his bid to chal­lenge the Gov­ern­ment's move to ex­tend the term of lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives by a year.

De­liv­er­ing a judge­ment at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, a short while ago, Ap­pel­late Judges Prakash Moo­sai, Gillian Lucky, and James Aboud dis­missed Ma­haraj's ap­peal against the Cab­i­net and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi.

Jus­tice Moo­sai, who de­liv­ered the pan­el's de­ci­sion, stat­ed that the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to vote on­ly ap­plied to gen­er­al elec­tions and not lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

The pan­el al­so ruled that the Cab­i­net was en­ti­tled to pro­claim seg­ments of the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form) Act, which pre­scribed the change.

The out­come of the ap­peal is not the end of Ma­haraj's le­gal chal­lenge as even be­fore the Ap­peal Court's de­ci­sion was de­liv­ered the par­ties agreed that the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil should weigh in on it.

In his law­suit, Ma­haraj is claim­ing that he be­came con­cerned af­ter Al-Rawi host­ed a press con­fer­ence and an­nounced the Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to pro­claim cer­tain sec­tions of the leg­is­la­tion.

The sec­tions of the leg­is­la­tion iden­ti­fied by Al-Rawi seek to in­crease the terms of coun­cilors from three years to four years. It ef­fec­tive­ly caused the de­fer­ral of the elec­tion, which would be due be­tween De­cem­ber, last year, and March, this year.

Ma­haraj is con­tend­ing that Al-Rawi mis­in­ter­pret­ed the ef­fect of the leg­is­la­tion when he an­nounced plans to ap­ply it to in­cum­bent coun­cil­lors and al­der­men as he claims that it did not have a retroac­tive ef­fect.

Through the law­suit, Ma­haraj is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against the move and an or­der quash­ing it.