Rishard Khan

Re­porter

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in the 2022 Agri­cul­ture So­ci­ety of T&T (ASTT) elec­tion, Bindra Ma­haraj, has been suc­cess­ful in his law­suit against the in­cum­bent ex­ec­u­tive over ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the elec­toral process.

In a 28-page judg­ment on Fri­day, High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed ruled that not on­ly was the im­prop­er pro­ce­dure fol­lowed to low­er mem­ber­ship fees but that the move to do so was mo­ti­vat­ed by pres­i­dent Dar­ryl Ram­per­sad’s hope to gain po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed de­clared the fol­low­ing:

That the de­ci­sion made by the ASTT on June 21, 2021 to re­duce the mem­ber­ship reg­is­tra­tion fee and re­new­al fee from $100.00 to $20.00 is ul­tra vires, null, void and of no ef­fect.

The de­ci­sion on June 21, 2021, re­duc­ing the mem­ber­ship and reg­is­tra­tion fees and re­new­al fee from $100.00 to $20.00 is quashed.

The de­ci­sion of the on De­cem­ber 22,2021, adopt­ing the fi­nal vot­ers list for the 2022 elec­tion of the CMASTT (Com­mi­tee of Man­age­ment of ASTT) is quashed.

The de­fen­dant is to pay the claimant’s costs of the ac­tion to be as­sessed by a Reg­is­trar in de­fault of agree­ment.

On the mat­ter of the de­ci­sion to low­er the fees, Jus­tice Mo­hammed said the prop­er pro­ce­dure was not fol­lowed to am­ply no­ti­fy mem­bers of the meet­ing when the de­ci­sion was made and to pub­li­cise the de­ci­sion once it was made.

On the mat­ter of mo­tives, Jus­tice Mo­hammed con­sid­ered the ev­i­dence put forth by CMASTT mem­bers Gwynette Ram­samooj, Am­ri­ka Singh, Glen­da Solo­man.

She found Ram­per­sad’s de­nial of their ev­i­dence “to be lack­ing in de­tails and there­fore un­con­vinc­ing.”

The judge said, “In par­tic­u­lar, Mr Ram­per­sad did not de­ny the re­spec­tive tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions which each de­po­nent stat­ed he had with them. In my opin­ion, the ev­i­dence of Ms Singh, Ms Ram­samooj and Ms Solomon tak­en as a whole is com­pelling and es­tab­lished a con­sis­tent pat­tern of con­duct and in­ten­tion of Mr Ram­per­sad since ear­ly June 2021, which was pri­or to the meet­ing on 21 June 2021. In my opin­ion this ev­i­dence clear­ly demon­strat­ed that Mr Ram­per­sad’s mo­tive of fa­cil­i­tat­ing and not de­fer­ring the mo­tion to re­duce the fees in or­der to com­ply with Rule 7 of the Rules was to give him a po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage in the 2022 elec­tion.”

The women made ar­gu­ments of Ram­per­sad try­ing to con­vince them to get friends and fam­i­ly to join the ASTT and vote in his favour and to con­ceal their ac­tions by with­hold­ing re­ceipts of mem­ber­ship pay­ments.

While there were oth­er ar­gu­ments that arose about the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the vot­er’s list and were ad­dressed by Jus­tice Mo­hammed, she ul­ti­mate­ly con­clud­ed: “In any event, the source of the ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties stemmed from the flawed de­ci­sion made on 21 June 2021 to re­duce the fees for a spe­cif­ic pe­ri­od. In this re­gard, any vot­ers list which con­tains the names of per­sons who were reg­is­tered as new or re­newed mem­bers with the $20.00 fee can­not be prop­er mem­bers as this was based on a flawed de­ci­sion.”

On Jan­u­ary 15, 2022, Ma­haraj, the pres­i­dent of the SILLS Farm­ers Sup­port Lob­by Group filed an in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion to stop the elec­tion over the ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and was grant­ed by Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams.

Ma­haraj was rep­re­sent­ed Jean Paul La­m­ont in­struct­ed by Le­an­drea Lutch­man.

Rep­re­sent­ing the ASTT was Ken Wright in­struct­ed by Car­olyn Milling­ton.