The parliamentary opposition has welcomed a change in the law to allow some public servants to contest general elections without having to resign from their posts.
However, Leader of the Opposition Godwin Friday said the law should have been amended since 2010 when three teachers who were forced to resign to run for his New Democratic Party (NDP) were not rehired after losing the elections.
“I would like to say that I am happy to support this legislation because it gives effect to something that should have been in place a long time ago,” the opposition leader said.
“But at the same time, I have to balance it with all that I have said, understanding that the effect … of the delay without good reason, it’s bittersweet, and that taste is not going to go away,” he said.
Friday noted that Elvis Daniel, one of the three teachers, died just months after qualifying for his pension.
“This mustn’t happen,” Friday said. “The government has to stand by its word. You can’t just change it because you don’t like the people who are being affected.”
The opposition leader was referring to the election leave provision of a collective agreement that the government signed with the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Teachers’ Union in 2005.
However, when the NDP teachers relied on the agreement ahead of the general election in 2010, the Public Service Commission pointed them to the section of the Constitution that bars public officers from being candidates in elections.
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, who signed the agreement as a witness later said the election leave article was “aspirational” and the union knew this when it signed.
Friday said the intention to permit public officers to contest elections without jeopardy to their positions, their accumulated benefits and pension rights if they lose has been spoken about and advocated for over many years.
“Certainly, for us on this side of the house, we welcome that liberation, if you like, of our public officers to be able to participate in this way in the political life and governance of our country,” Friday said.
He noted that the matter had been addressed in a Court of Appeal decision relating to the three teachers.
Friday said that some of the nation’s best-trained people, socially and politically, work as public officers.
“… so, the provision or the amendments now to enable them to do so, … that is something to be welcomed because it gave real meaning to the wish that many persons in the public service, in the teaching profession, and certainly in even a wider society would have had with respect to participation in public life, it’s been too restrictive.”
The opposition leader said that accommodation had been made individually without amendments to any particular legislation.
“But it was not as a matter of right. It was done on a one-on-one basis and depending on the parties involved at the time and, to put it in the most general way, the circumstances surrounding a particular person and their application for reinstatement,” Friday said.
“So, to be clear, we are not against this. I said in the select committee meeting similarly, because we want to see more people participate in public life.”
He said the change in the law, however, has had “a long and painful history”, adding that the case of the NDP teachers highlights “the difficulties that have been encountered over the years with respect to individuals in the teaching service who wish to run as candidates … and then were not successful and found themselves without jobs”.
The opposition leader said that while the amendment should not be controversial, it should also not be debated “without giving proper context to what we are doing”.
Friday traced the history of the collective agreement and its impact on the NDP Teachers.
“When they reapplied for their positions, they received letters from the chief personnel officer saying, ‘There is no vacancy at this time to which you can be appointed.’”
He said the teachers each had over 30 years’ experience in the classroom and Daniel was a specialist maths teacher.
“They were all thrown on the bread lines. No consideration was given by the government to reinstating them. In fact, they said on the government side that they wouldn’t lift a finger to help any of those persons who had found themselves without a job,” Friday said.
“I know those three men well. I know the hell they went through. I know the difficulties that they encountered, the uncertainty,” the opposition leader further said, noting that Johnson was approaching retirement “and that was all thrown aside”.
Friday said that because St. Vincent and the Grenadines “is a country that strives to be a country of laws” the Teachers’ Union took the matter to court and won on appeal.
“… that is the legal aspect of it. The real-life impact of it is really what gives the full understanding of the seriousness, the implications of the decision that the government took when it said it wouldn’t lift a finger to help those persons to regain their positions. What was driving that?” Friday said.
In presenting the bill to Parliament, Gonsalves, who has ministerial responsibilities for electoral matters, said that he had been involved in a public discussion on what should or should not be in the Constitution.
“And at the time, I was a member of YULIMO (Youlou United Liberation Movement), and we had authored a very substantive document on the Constitution amendments, and we were part of the national independence committee, a non-governmental body which was formed to have discussions on the Constitution.”
He said the discussion continued for the 45 years since independence, culminating with the amendment on Tuesday.
Friday noted that barring public servants from contesting general elections “is an old colonial view…
“If we believe that, then what was driving the decision to say that those persons, having relied on an agreement between the government and the Teachers’ Union, having been called upon by their communities to put themselves forward, what was driving that?
“What contradicted in the instance when it had to be applied to these three teachers? What contradicted the belief and the feeling and all of those high expectations that were had when the agreement was signed in 2005? … because these were candidates of the New Democratic Party? Could it be anything else? It was nothing else,” Friday said.
He said the Three NDP Teachers should not have suffered.
“The point is, what we’re doing here today is necessary, but it could have been done at the time when the need clearly arose in 2010. It could have been done to alleviate the hardship that those three teachers experienced having relied upon the word of the government and their union,” he said.
“The point is, in all that we have seen, in all of our grand proclamations about good governance and about us engaging or allowing public servants and teachers and all and so forth to participate in elections, it cannot overcome what is fundamentally an injustice that was done to these three candidates in that case.”
Some public servants still barred
Despite the change in the law, magistrates, registrars, legal officers, the deputy director of audits, deputy accountant general, deputy controller of customs and exercise, the deputy comptroller of inland revenue, the deputy supervisor of elections and the director of Maritime Administration are barred from contesting national elections without resigning their posts.
This is also the case with legal officers and people in other senior positions in government, such as permanent secretaries and heads of departments.
Diplomats, assistant directors of public prosecution, the chief agricultural officer, the chief engineer, the chief education officer and other senior positions “all the way down to supervisor of elections” also cannot contest national elections without resigning their posts.
Gonsalves also no one “who is clothed with authority in respect of security” should be allowed to contest elections.
Among these, he mentioned police officers, Maritime Administration staff or offices “where you can use your authority to do something with an individual’s liberty or with their property”.
Dr, Friday, you don’t look good when you are seen going along with long overdue Gonsalves colonial election bylaws. You make one step forward and ten steps backward.