Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor David Ab­du­lah has re­lin­quished his post as pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions (Fi­tun). In a sur­prise move yes­ter­day Ab­du­lah an­nounced his de­ci­sion not to of­fer him­self for re-elec­tion as pres­i­dent.

He was at the time ad­dress­ing Fi­tun's con­fer­ence of del­e­gates at Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union, Para­mount Build­ing, Cir­cu­lar Road, San Fer­nan­do. The con­fer­ence was at­tend­ed by del­e­gates from all the mem­ber unions and or­gan­i­sa­tions un­der Fi­tun, in­clud­ing the Ari­ma Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion, the Artists As­so­ci­a­tion, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Youth Coun­cil and Fire Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, among oth­ers.

Ab­du­lah told del­e­gates: "I feel that hav­ing made Fi­tun in­to a house­hold name in Trinidad and To­ba­go and tak­en it from in­fan­cy to its present stage, I think now is a very ap­pro­pri­ate time for me to re­lin­quish the pres­i­den­cy of Fi­tun." He said he al­so took a per­son­al de­ci­sion to fo­cus on the MSJ since the par­ty needs to be "nur­tured" and to grow.

Apart from be­ing Fi­tun pres­i­dent, Ab­du­lah is al­so the OW­TU's gen­er­al sec­re­tary and po­lit­i­cal leader of the MSJ. He told the del­e­gates: "I can­not be pres­i­dent of Fi­tun and po­lit­i­cal leader of MSJ and be fair to both. "Both will lose out if I am car­ry­ing that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and there­fore I think my prin­ci­pal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty right now is that of po­lit­i­cal leader of MSJ...I will con­tin­ue as gen­er­al sec­re­tary of OW­TU," he added.

Ab­du­lah re­flect­ed on the role of Fi­tun in the de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. In fact, he at­trib­ut­es the in­creas­ing lev­el of so­cial con­scious­ness to the ef­forts of Fi­tun dur­ing the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as protest and its re­lent­less pur­suit against the cor­rup­tion. He added that Fi­tun had re-es­tab­lished "so­cial move­ments in this coun­try."

"Fi­tun played a cru­cial role in bring­ing con­scious­ness to the lev­el where it is where no gov­ern­ment is safe from mass crit­i­cism and mass protest and no gov­ern­ment is safe if they go against the in­ter­est of the peo­ple and I think what we did over the years con­tributed im­mense­ly to that," Ab­du­lah de­clared.

He said even for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning ad­mit­ted that "it was the trade union mo­bil­i­sa­tion that forced him to call the elec­tion ear­ly in 2010." Ab­du­lah al­so re­spond­ed to the call by labour lead­ers for the for­ma­tion of a labour po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

On Sat­ur­day, Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) leader Vin­cent Cabr­era called for the for­ma­tion of a labour po­lit­i­cal par­ty. At yes­ter­day's con­fer­ence Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union pres­i­dent Joseph Re­my added his sup­port to Cabr­era's call. Ab­du­lah said: "I hear my col­leagues speak­ing about the work­ers' par­ty but it is not an ab­strac­tion...The work­ers par­ty is the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice."