Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has scored a vic­to­ry in the High Court against the Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to pre­vent the dis­missal of one of the par­ty’s nom­i­nees for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions who was threat­ened with ter­mi­na­tion.

Jus­tice Kevin Ram­cha­ran grant­ed an emer­gency in­junc­tion last night ef­fec­tive­ly block­ing the CBTT from ter­mi­nat­ing UNC nom­i­nee Lyn­don de Gannes who is vy­ing for the Mal­abar North con­stituen­cy un­der the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion. He faced dis­missal as a Chauf­feur II if he failed to with­draw his can­di­da­cy or re­sign. He had been work­ing with the com­pa­ny for the past 28 years.

On June 26, de Gannes filed his nom­i­na­tion form with the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC). He re­ceived a let­ter from his em­ploy­er two days lat­er, in­form­ing him of the work rules and reg­u­la­tions in the CBTT’s code of con­duct as set out in its Hu­man Re­source Man­u­al (2015) which pro­hibits staff from run­ning for po­lit­i­cal of­fice. He was giv­en un­til June 30 to de­cide. The let­ter to De Gannes said “No em­ploy­ee can con­tin­ue in the Bank’s em­ploy while run­ning for po­lit­i­cal of­fice. In the cir­cum­stances, please con­firm to the un­der­signed your po­si­tion re­gard­ing with­draw­al as a can­di­date in the 2023 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions by June 30, 2023”.

De Gannes wrote to the CBTT to ask for some time, how­ev­er, they re­port­ed­ly re­fused.

In his af­fi­davit filed be­fore the court, he said the bank’s de­ci­sion was “fun­da­men­tal­ly un­fair.”

He is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al.

The reg­u­la­tions

The rel­e­vant reg­u­la­tions state: “06.03.04. Po­lit­i­cal Ac­tiv­i­ty and Par­tic­i­pa­tion: The Bank en­cour­ages our em­ploy­ees to ex­er­cise their civic rights. How­ev­er, as the Bank must op­er­ate in an ob­jec­tive, im­par­tial and bal­anced man­ner, and be seen to be po­lit­i­cal­ly in­de­pen­dent, our em­ploy­ees shall not run for, nor hold a po­lit­i­cal, lo­cal gov­ern­ment, bor­ough coun­cil or par­lia­men­tary of­fice.”