SHANE SU­PERVILLE

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

One day af­ter news broke that UWI Guild pres­i­dent Kir­by Moses was re­called from the po­si­tion, which was de­clared va­cant, Moses is threat­en­ing that the “nec­es­sary au­thor­i­ties will be ac­ti­vat­ed”.

Moses has ques­tioned the le­git­i­ma­cy of a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing held on Sep­tem­ber 13 which sought to end her ap­point­ment.

A source at the Guild told Guardian Me­dia that a pe­ti­tion con­tain­ing 229 sig­na­tures was pre­sent­ed at the meet­ing, fol­lowed by a vote which ap­proved the pe­ti­tion to re­call the po­si­tion of pres­i­dent.

How­ev­er, Moses de­scribed the meet­ing as “pro­ce­du­ral­ly in­cor­rect,” cit­ing the pe­ti­tion sec­tion of the Guild’s con­sti­tu­tion, which states that such meet­ings can on­ly be con­vened by the pres­i­dent.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions via What­sApp yes­ter­day morn­ing, Moses, added the vote would be void, not­ing that the pe­ti­tion did not in­clude key el­e­ments for it to be con­sid­ered valid.

“What was pre­sent­ed to the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion was a skewed poll that di­rect­ed stu­dents to ab­stain or vote for or against re­call rather than one that fol­lowed the con­sti­tu­tion­al op­tions for res­o­lu­tion of the pe­ti­tion. 

“By not of­fer­ing stu­dents the op­tion of amend­ment as one of the fun­da­men­tal res­o­lu­tions, a crit­i­cal choice was tak­en away from the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion.

“To clar­i­fy, on­ly the pres­i­dent can sum­mon such a meet­ing and while I aimed to of­fi­cial­ly or­gan­ise and sum­mon the meet­ing, as is my con­sti­tu­tion­al du­ty, the ap­pli­ca­tions I sub­mit­ted to suc­cess­ful­ly sum­mon the meet­ing were dis­re­gard­ed and the ap­provals to host the meet­ing on Fri­day (Sep­tem­ber 13),” she ex­plained.

The meet­ing and pe­ti­tion to have Moses re­moved as pres­i­dent was the lat­est de­vel­op­ment in a frac­ture with­in the guild’s lead­er­ship.

The prob­lems arose when Moses was ac­cused of ap­point­ing her broth­er, Kemp Moses as the guild’s trea­sur­er, fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Liam Mo­hammed ear­li­er this year.

De­spite Kemp Moses’ in­sis­tence that he was not ap­point­ed by his sis­ter, a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence was brought against her.

How­ev­er, Moses re­fused to step down con­tend­ing that the mo­tion was a re­sult of her calls to have the guild’s ac­counts au­dit­ed.

In her What­sApp re­sponse, Moses dou­bled down on her calls for greater trans­paren­cy with­in the guild, adding that she felt the lat­est in­ci­dents were in­tend­ed to vic­timise her.

“I feel like I have rocked the boat and asked ques­tions that have made mem­bers of the ad­min­is­tra­tion re­alise that I am not as eas­i­ly ma­nip­u­lat­ed as they had hoped for me to be. 

“I am not in the busi­ness of re­spectabil­i­ty pol­i­tics and con­don­ing wrong­do­ing as my si­lence would be my com­pli­ance in cor­rupt­ed ac­tiv­i­ty and as I have said be­fore, I ran a clean cam­paign, I in­tend to lead a clean coun­cil,” Moses as­sert­ed.

She added that even if the guild’s ex­ec­u­tive is de­ter­mined to have her re­moved, the con­sti­tu­tion stip­u­lates that she re­main as pres­i­dent un­til an elec­tion is held.

Asked what her next course of ac­tion would be, Moses said she in­tend­ed to take all re­ports to an or­di­nary gen­er­al meet­ing to present to the stu­dent body, adding that oth­er ac­tion was like­ly de­pend­ing on what hap­pens.

“If the ad­min­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues to make hasty and sus­pi­cious pow­er plays like threats of le­gal ac­tion if I con­tin­ue telling truth of the fi­nan­cial op­pres­sion and dis­re­gard for the au­ton­o­my of stu­dent so­ci­eties, at what is meant to be a stu­dent-cen­tered uni­ver­si­ty, the nec­es­sary au­thor­i­ties will be ac­ti­vat­ed.”