Categorized | National News

BUT Elections Stalled

After a Supreme Court’s ruling, the conclusion of the Bahamas Union of Teachers (BUT) elections remains up in the air.

Suspended BUT President Belinda Wilson continues to fight to hold on to her top post, and at the same time advocates for two other incumbent positions.

Those positions are namely, Treasurer and Trustee contended by Lorraine Knowles and Mizpah Munroe respectively.

In December 2014, Mrs. Wilson, along with Mrs. Knowles and Mrs. Munroe were suspended by the union’s executive committee upon claims of misappropriation of the organisation’s funds.

The trio was subsequently denied the right by the executive committee to enter the race for the union’s elections on June 9th.

However, Mrs. Wilson told The Bahama Journal that the trio should have been vindicated after an official audit review proved their hands were clean.

According to Mrs. Wilson, on June 1st, a Supreme Court’s decision gave the trio the right to exhaust all avenues to appeal the committee’s decision.

This also resulted in the positions of president, treasurer and trustee being omitted from the ballot until the suspended members had sought justice.

“Once that would have been completed then a fixed date would have been set for the elections. However, we have not exhausted all of our levels of appeal within the union, but the executives still went ahead and they set the date for the elections for tomorrow which would’ve been Tuesday September 20th. So we would have petitioned the court and we were successful in having an injunction granted to restrain the union from holding the elections tomorrow,” said Mrs. Wilson.

Mrs. Wilson added that despite the fact that the trio has fulfilled their suspension, they have not been reinstated.

In light of this and the issues surrounding their nominations for the elections, a substantive hearing is scheduled for September 30.

“On this day the judge will rule on what will happen with our suspension an also our nomination,” she said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Written by Jones Bahamas

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