Duke: Don't blame me for PSA election being postponed

Public Services Association (PSA) president Watson Duke says he has nothing to do with the postponement of the upcoming PSA election.

Justice Nadia Kangaloo ordered the postponement on Monday from November 23 after she detected irregularities in the final voters' list presented by the election committee.

Once issues with the list are settled the election will now happen on December 14.

In an interview on Tuesday, Duke said he was not concerned about these discrepancies interfering with his chances in the elections – whenever they are – and that he would ensure the process is free and fair by all means possible.

He said he was more determined now because he recognised he was fighting against a mafia in the PSA trying to undercut the legitimacy of the election committee and the executive.

This is the second time the election has been halted by questions about the legitimacy of the voters' list.

In 2017 the election was stopped after contender Solomon Gabriel and his Team Fixers got an injunction through a lawsuit challenging the election process. In its legal challenge, Gabriel’s team argued that the list was fundamentally flawed because of the union's general council to allow PSA members whose union dues were in arrears to vote if they cleared their arrears.

The committee was sent back to “sanitise” the list and set a new date for elections. But the irregularities were not fixed and the committee resigned. The election was pushed to November 2020 and an order made for the list to be sorted and ready for the next election date.

Duke explained a list of all eligible voters had not been properly compiled and validated. The elections committee was told on Monday that the list presented to the court did not conform to the order the judge made in February 2018.

Duke said, “Now we are in November, elections are being held again. There's a new general secretary, Shalene Suchit-Dwarika, and a new election committee, all selected by the General Council. But it remains the role of the general secretary in accordance with Article 40, subsection two of the PSA Constitution, to keep the roll of the list of members who are in the PSA at all meetings.

“Validating members is something for the general secretary's office to do in these elections. I would have spoken and written to the general secretary around March of this year, I said, 'Look, get the roll ready, get the books ready. We need to have elections.' I said, 'By August, we need to have the list perfected.'"

But he said what had been produced was not a list of eligible voters. In addition, the list had been produced manually, on paper, "which is difficult to check, but (especially) with about 20,000 members, 15,000 members, it will be difficult for anyone to go through the list thoroughly.”

Duke accused his opponents of single-handedly trying to scrap the elections.

The elections committee has until November 24 to present the new final list to the court. The parties will return to court on November 26.