Jensen La Vende 

Se­nior Re­porter 

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt 

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Fe­l­isha Thomas says the first or­der of busi­ness af­ter her vic­to­ry will be to oust the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) from of­fice.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side the PSA’s head­quar­ters on Aber­crom­by Street yes­ter­day, Thomas, who was un­of­fi­cial­ly de­scribed by the elec­tion com­mit­tee as hav­ing won by a land­slide, said the op­po­si­tion had a bet­ter track record of meet­ing work­ers’ needs.

“The first or­der of busi­ness I would say, is to re­move our op­pres­sive gov­ern­ment from of­fice,” she said, adding that the PSA met with and would con­tin­ue to meet with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC). 

“We have been hav­ing dis­cus­sions with them, and it has been fruit­ful, and we will con­tin­ue to have dis­cus­sions. If you can re­call, un­der the UNC gov­ern­ment was the last back pay work­ers got, which was 14 per cent. Sev­er­al work­ers would have re­ceived their pro­mo­tion and ap­point­ment and a lot of oth­er things hap­pen­ing in the work­place in that time. Pos­i­tive things on be­half of work­ers. So, it is my view that un­der the UNC, work­ers stand to gain a lot, in com­par­i­son to what we have seen un­der this PNM gov­ern­ment.” 

Thomas said the union was not en­ter­ing the realm of par­ty pol­i­tics but un­der­stood that pol­i­tics is a part of the union’s do­main.

“What we have main­tained as the PSA is that this has noth­ing to do with be­ing red or yel­low. This has to do with work­ers and seek­ing and work­ing with who is will­ing to work with work­ers. We have seen over the past few years that this gov­ern­ment is not will­ing to ne­go­ti­ate or to treat with work­ers’ is­sues. And all we have sim­ply said as a union, if you don’t want to speak to work­ers is­sues, we will speak to those who want to.” 

Thomas and her team, Sacro­sanct, de­feat­ed Oral Saun­ders and his Unit­ed Pub­lic Of­fi­cers and Nixon Cal­len­der Team Sen­tinel. She is the sec­ond woman to ever lead the PSA since its for­ma­tion in the 1930’s. 

The first woman to lead the PSA was Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus, who served from 1997 to 2009. When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, the for­mer Labour Min­is­ter un­der the PNM said she had noth­ing to say on Thomas’ vic­to­ry.

While elec­tion of­fi­cers say the count­ing of bal­lots was ex­pect­ed to end some­time af­ter 10 pm, sup­port­ers of both Cal­len­der and Saun­ders raised is­sues with the count­ing of votes.

Dur­ing a Face­book live on Mon­day night, Cal­len­der said bal­lots re­mained un­count­ed up to 9.30 pm, de­spite elec­tions end­ing at 4.30 pm. He said, like all oth­er elec­tions in the PSA, this one, was ques­tion­able.

“Com­rades, yet again the PSA elec­tions are now be­ing ques­tioned and is ques­tion­able. This can­not con­tin­ue any­more. This is why we urge mem­bers of the pub­lic ser­vice and oth­er statu­to­ry bod­ies to come out and make a de­ci­sive de­ci­sion.”

Cal­len­der added that there were some 1,000 spe­cial votes to be count­ed, which at the time of his Face­book live, had not yet be­gun.

Asked about this, Thomas said that is noth­ing new for the PSA, stress­ing that noth­ing un­to­ward was hap­pen­ing. 

She said the bal­lot box­es were com­ing from all cor­ners of the coun­try, so that would nat­u­ral­ly take some time along with the count­ing of spe­cial bal­lots, which are those who vot­ed at polling sta­tions that their names were not list­ed but are on the mas­ter list of el­i­gi­ble vot­ers. 

Sup­port­ers of both Cal­len­der and Saun­ders said, among oth­er things, the count­ing and col­lect­ing of spe­cial votes were ques­tion­able. Asked about al­leged dis­crep­an­cies re­gard­ing this, Thomas said that was not so. 

“I’ve been here since last night in­to this morn­ing, and what I’ve seen, these spe­cial bal­lots are all sealed in­di­vid­u­al­ly in sep­a­rate en­velopes. So, you have hun­dreds of en­velopes in­side there in­di­vid­u­al­ly sealed.”