30,000 eligible to vote in PSA election today

Around 30,000 public servants are eligible to vote in the Public Services Association (PSA) election today.

The election has been due since 2017.

On Sunday, PSA president Watson Duke told Newsday he will not let anything jeopardise the integrity or halt the election process. He is confident his team will win.

The election was originally set for November 23 but was postponed on November 16 after Justice Nadia Kangaloo detected irregularities in the final voters' list presented by the election committee.

On Friday the matter was withdrawn and the election was given the green light. Duke’s GameChangers is going up against Curtis Cuffie’s Concerned Public Officers and Labour Warriors led by Ian Murray.

Murray, who is also PSA vice president, told Newsday on Sunday he believes there are still irregularities with the voters list but he isn’t in a position to take any action or raise the issue. Despite his suspicions, he said he is going into the election with high hopes of removing Duke as leader.

Cuffie also told Newsday on Friday, the matter was “still very troubling,” since the voters’ list, which the court had deemed not satisfactory, was “still bad.”

Asked about issues surrounding the voters list still being raised by his opponents, Duke said he isn’t surprised by “relentless attempts to undermine the election."

He said, "If they were concerned they should have raised an objection in court on Friday. All of them were there.

“They don’t have a problem with the PSA, they have a problem with Duke. And the problem they are having with Duke isn’t that Duke isn’t good at what he does, they cannot become like Duke. They are envious, they are bitter and their entire life has been spent creating mischief and attempting to make the PSA look undesirable.”

The issues surrounding the voters' list started in 2017 when 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. This is when the election was pushed to November 2020.

When the parties brought the final list on November 16, Kangaloo was not convinced the list satisfied the order she made in February 2018.

The election committee was given more time to have the list validated and the election was pushed to December 14. Members of the PSA executive blamed the first general secretary Sharlene Suchit-Dwarika, who is responsible for compiling and validating the list.

Less than a week after, Duke took action against two executive members— Murray and Suchit-Dwarika –for failing to effectively and efficiently conduct their duties. They were suspended with immediate effect and with full pay until the next general council meeting.

On Sunday, Duke told Newsday he will not allow any distractions to interrupt or hold back the election.

Duke called on his opponents to retire if they are unsuccessful in the election.

"Their aim isn’t to vindicate or relieve the people who are members and are crying out in bondage. They want to keep the distressed members crying out for justice in bondage, keep them in confusion.”