Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter-In­ves­tiga­tive

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) is again ques­tion­ing the non-re­new­al of for­mer In­dus­tri­al Court pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix’s con­tract, but it is now al­leg­ing that a pos­si­ble con­flict of in­ter­est sur­round­ing Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo’s hus­band Ker­wyn Gar­cia’s in­volve­ment in a case be­fore the court, may have been the rea­son for Thomas-Fe­lix’s re­moval.

In a me­dia state­ment yes­ter­day, even as Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo ap­point­ed Heather Seale hours ear­li­er to re­place Thomas-Fe­lix, JTUM said Gar­cia was rep­re­sent­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­est in a num­ber of mat­ters, par­tic­u­lar­ly the wage ne­go­ti­a­tion of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB), which was part-heard be­fore Thomas-Fe­lix.

In that mat­ter, the NIB was po­si­tioned to pay above the state-man­dat­ed cap of a four per cent wage in­crease.

The state­ment fol­lowed a let­ter de­liv­ered to Kan­ga­loo on Tues­day call­ing for her to re­think her po­si­tion. JTUM had sub­mit­ted then that Thomas-Fe­lix’s non-re­new­al was be­ing in­ter­pret­ed as a way for Gov­ern­ment to get an up­per hand in in­dus­tri­al dis­putes through a for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) mem­ber se­lect­ing some­one who may be be­hold­en to her and the par­ty she once rep­re­sent­ed.

In their state­ment yes­ter­day, JTUM dou­bled down on its as­ser­tion that some­thing was amiss and added the el­e­ment of the Kan­ga­loo’s hus­band’s in­volve­ment in the NIB mat­ter to their claims.

“The NIB is rep­re­sent­ed by the First Gen­tle­man Mr Gar­cia SC. That dis­pute was be­ing heard by a pan­el chaired by Her Ho­n­our Mrs Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix. Her Ex­cel­len­cy’s de­ci­sion to not re­new the ap­point­ment of Her Ho­n­our rais­es the per­cep­tion that Her Ex­cel­len­cy’s de­ci­sion has af­fect­ed the con­sti­tu­tion of the pan­el of the In­dus­tri­al Court hear­ing a mat­ter of ma­jor sig­nif­i­cance to NIB staff, a mat­ter in which her hus­band ap­pears as coun­sel,” it said.

The re­lease al­so called for the Pres­i­dent to ex­plain why she de­cid­ed not to re­new Thomas-Fe­lix’s con­tract, par­tic­u­lar­ly as some court mat­ters were par­tial­ly heard be­fore her.

Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo is a for­mer PNM min­is­ter and mem­ber, while her hus­band’s rel­a­tives al­so have strong PNM ties.

Gar­cia’s fa­ther is An­tho­ny Gar­cia, a for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ari­ma un­der the PNM. His un­cle, Noel Gar­cia, is the cur­rent chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of TT (Ude­cott) and the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), ap­point­ments he re­ceived un­der the PNM.

The Pres­i­dent had not re­spond­ed to the union’s claims as of yes­ter­day, nei­ther had Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Time to change process

In a fol­low-up in­ter­view, JTUM ques­tioned whether the part-heard mat­ter in the In­dus­tri­al Court will now have to restart, sim­i­lar to what took place when for­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar was ap­point­ed a High Court Judge and her part-heard mat­ters in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court all had to be restart­ed be­fore a new mag­is­trate.

“The cir­cum­stances in which Her Ex­cel­len­cy, as this coun­try’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive, has failed to re­new the ap­point­ment of Thomas-Fe­lix, even for the pur­pose of com­plet­ing part-heard mat­ters, and the haste with which a new Pres­i­dent of the Court has been ap­point­ed, again rais­es the need for a whole­sale re­view of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act to ad­dress is­sues such as the fes­ter­ing view that the In­dus­tri­al Court, as a statu­to­ry body ex­er­cis­ing the State’s ju­di­cial pow­er, lacks suf­fi­cient in­de­pen­dence from the Ex­ec­u­tive, the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, se­cu­ri­ty of tenure of judges of the court and the per­cep­tion that the Spe­cial Tri­bunal, com­prised of judges of the In­dus­tri­al Court, lacks suf­fi­cient in­de­pen­dence from the Ex­ec­u­tive.”

JTUM al­so said this was the first time it re­calls a Pres­i­dent be­ing re­moved in such a hasty man­ner with no op­por­tu­ni­ty for a prop­er han­dover.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, be­fore JTUM’s me­dia re­lease, Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) leader Michael An­nisette said the time had come to re­view the se­lec­tion process for the court’s lead­er­ship.

“We need to look at a new process and a new mech­a­nism at how we ap­point judges to the court and al­so the pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court. There has to be a lev­el of trans­paren­cy, there has to be in­volve­ment, in our view, of the stake­hold­ers, which is em­ploy­er, the gov­ern­ment and the union, we have to be in­volved in it.”

He said the cur­rent process is that the Pres­i­dent, in con­sul­ta­tion with the Chief Jus­tice, ap­points the pres­i­dent while the oth­er judges are se­lect­ed by Cab­i­net ap­provals.

An­nisette said while it is not the norm, he re­called for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning con­sult­ing with unions on the ap­point­ment of judges and said this should be re­vis­it­ed.

Sec­tion Three of the In­dus­tri­al Court Act ex­plains how the In­dus­tri­al Court pres­i­dent is ap­point­ed.

The law states: “The Court shall con­sist of the fol­low­ing mem­bers: (a) a Pres­i­dent of the Court who shall be— (i) a Judge of the Supreme Court of Ju­di­ca­ture des­ig­nat­ed, with his con­sent, by the Pres­i­dent of Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the Chief Jus­tice; or (ii) a per­son who has the qual­i­fi­ca­tion (age ex­cept­ed) to be ap­point­ed a Judge of the Supreme Court of Ju­di­ca­ture and is ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent of Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the Chief Jus­tice.”

An­nisette claimed three months ago, Thomas-Fe­lix al­so wrote to the Pres­i­dent in­di­cat­ing her will­ing­ness to con­tin­ue in the post.

In de­fend­ing Thomas-Fe­lix’s tenure on Tues­day, JTUM said she is one of 20 peo­ple in the world who was ap­point­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) as a mem­ber of the Com­mit­tee of Ex­perts on the Ap­pli­ca­tion of Con­ven­tions and Rec­om­men­da­tions. She is cur­rent­ly in Gene­va, Switzer­land, ad­ju­di­cat­ing an ILO mat­ter and is sched­uled to re­turn on Sat­ur­day.

JTUM al­so raised ques­tions about Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie’s in­volve­ment in the mat­ter. The ques­tions posed were:

1. Were you con­sult­ed by the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic, Her Ex­cel­len­cy Mrs Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, on the ap­point­ment of Ms Heather Seale, the pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court?

2. If so, when were you con­sult­ed?

3. Pro­vide a copy of your re­sponse to Her Ex­cel­len­cy Mrs Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo con­cern­ing the ap­point­ment of the Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court.

Guardian Me­dia again called and mes­saged Thomas-Fe­lix yes­ter­day but re­ceived no re­sponse.

Seale hap­py to be se­lect­ed

New­ly ap­point­ed In­dus­tri­al Court Heather pres­i­dent Heather Seale says she is ho­n­oured to have been se­lect­ed to fol­low in the foot­steps of past pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Seale said she was en­gaged on sev­er­al fronts af­ter her ap­point­ment and was too busy for a lengthy in­ter­view.

How­ev­er, she thanked Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo for se­lect­ing her.

“I ac­cept­ed the kind ap­point­ment of Her Ex­cel­len­cy, the Pres­i­dent. I am ho­n­oured to walk in the same shoes of all the past pres­i­dents, in­clud­ing the im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent and Mrs Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix, who has left an in­deli­ble mark on the court. That is what I would say at this time. Thank you so much for reach­ing out.”

In a me­dia state­ment an­nounc­ing Seale’s ap­point­ment, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent said Seale has been a mem­ber of the court since 2004 and holds a Mas­ter’s De­gree in Oc­cu­pa­tion­al and En­vi­ron­men­tal Safe­ty and Health, and a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence De­gree in So­ci­ol­o­gy, from the Uni­ver­si­ty of The West In­dies. She al­so holds an LLB De­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don and is a Cer­ti­fied Me­di­a­tor.

Seale has al­so been a lay leader for the past ten years at the Uni­ty Cen­tre of Faith and acts as a men­tor for stu­dents at her al­ma mater St Fran­cois Girls’ Col­lege.