Ali­cia Llanos

Ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), who have been banned from en­ter­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion's of­fice on Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, to per­form their du­ties have in­formed the union's banks that Wat­son Duke is not au­tho­rised to ac­cess any PSA funds. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, PSA ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Yvonne de Peza said to pro­tect the union's as­sets they had con­tact­ed their banks and in­formed them that Duke could no longer gain ac­cess to the funds. She had pre­vi­ous­ly said be­cause of Duke's spend­ing habits the union fi­nances were in "trou­ble." De Peza and oth­er ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers had ac­cused Duke of us­ing funds with­out coun­cil per­mis­sion and al­low­ing non-elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers to sign PSA cheques.

On Fri­day, the PSA gen­er­al coun­cil held a meet­ing where Duke was found guilty of nine charges against him. These charges in­clud­ed fi­nan­cial mis­con­duct and fail­ure to ad­here to the PSA con­sti­tu­tion. Duke was there­by ex­pelled as pres­i­dent of the PSA. How­ev­er, at press con­fer­ence hours af­ter the meet­ing, Duke stat­ed he was still pres­i­dent of the PSA and the gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing was il­le­gal ac­cord­ing to the PSA con­sti­tu­tion. De Peza dis­missed Duke's claims yes­ter­day, say­ing Fri­day's gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing was legal­ly con­sti­tut­ed and had enough mem­bers to hold a cau­cus. She al­so de­nied Duke's claims that mem­bers at the meet­ing had been sus­pend­ed by the gen­er­al coun­cil.

De Peza said at a gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing on Au­gust 18, Duke tried to have cer­tain mem­bers sus­pend­ed. How­ev­er, he failed to win the two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty vote to suc­ceed. There­fore, she said, all mem­bers present at Fri­day's meet­ing were le­gal gen­er­al coun­cil mem­bers. Pressed about Duke's plans to hold a gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing this week, she said the mem­bers Duke had called on were not gen­er­al coun­cil rep­re­sen­ta­tives. De Peza said, for ex­am­ple, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive he had called from the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex was not an elect­ed coun­cil mem­ber and was, in fact, sus­pend­ed by past PSA pres­i­dent Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus.

She said the gen­er­al coun­cil was very aware Duke would not leave with­out a fight. De Peza said the gen­er­al coun­cil was in the process of ex­plor­ing its le­gal op­tions, as all ac­tions tak­en by the gen­er­al coun­cil were le­gal and with­in the con­sti­tu­tion. She said the ex­ec­u­tive had planned to meet with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs and oth­er law en­force­ment of­fi­cials to dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion to avoid an­oth­er vi­o­lent out­burst at the PSA.