Suspended GTU Pres, 2nd VP ask High Court to remove Coretta McDonald from leadership

Last Updated on Friday, 24 January 2025, 16:12 by Writer

President of the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU), Dr Mark Lyte and 2nd Vice President, Julian Cambridge have moved to the High Court to challenge their suspension and at the same time ask the High Court to order the removal of Coretta McDonald as the union’s General Secretary because she is a parliamentarian.

Dr Lyte and Mr Cambridge hope to secure a declaration that “on a true and proper interpretation of the constitution of the Guyana Teachers’ Union, the second respondent, Coretta McDonald, is not entitled to lawfully hold the position of General Secretary of the Guyana Teachers’ Union or any other elected position in the Guyana Teachers’ Union while she holds office as an elected member of the National Assembly of Guyana.”

Further, the applicants want an order declaring vacant the position of the GTU General Secretary because Ms McDonald is not entitled to be elected to that or any other position of that trade union because she is a member of the National Assembly. She is a parliamentarian for the People’s National Congress Reform-led A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC).

Further, Dr Lyte and Mr Cambridge say, through their lawyer, that the General Council meeting that voted in favour of their suspension was improperly constituted since the General Secretary was not lawfully entitled to hold that position since a parliamentarian can only hold a position of Immediate Past President.

During last year’s prolonged teachers strike, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo had often stated that Ms McDonald could not be the General Secretary and a parliamentarian at the same time. APNU has been backing the GTU in its quest for higher salaries and better working conditions as well the reintroduction of the automatic deduction and remittance of membership dues to the GTU, a system that has been quashed by the government over failure to comply with legally mandated accountability rules.

They want the case to be heard and determined urgently because they are being prevented from carrying out their elected functions and no investigation has taken place more than one month later and they need to complete their work for the GTU’s elections that are due in April 2025. The suspension can only be appealed at the GTU’s triennial conference slated for April when the elections would be held.

Through Attorney-at-Law, Kamal Ramkarran, Dr Lyte and Mr Cambridge also want the High Court to find that their suspension on December 17, 2024, was made based on wrong facts, violates the GTU’s constitution and is a breach of natural justice and that their suspension be set aside.

In their supporting documents, they said no notice of the suspension motion, which was moved on the floor on December 17, 2004, was given. The motion for their immediate suspension was passed by a majority and they were asked to leave the meeting, according to one of the grounds for the application. “The applicants were given no notice of the motion before it was brought and were given no opportunity either to be made fully aware of the case made out against them or to properly put forward an answer to the motion or to the request that they be suspended from duties as President and 2nd Vice President of the union. They were not made aware of what exactly needed to be investigated,” their lawyer states.

Further, Mr Ramkarran states that no investigations have followed and no communication has been made to Dr Lyte and Mr Cambridge but the Ministry of Education, Education International, Caribbean Union of Teachers and the Ministry of Labour have been informed that they have been suspended, and their offices have been “padlocked shut” by GTU officials.

The lawyer states that the motion, which led to the apparent suspension of Dr Lyte and Mr Cambridge alleges that they unilaterally entered int0 an agreement with the State to end industrial action between the State and the GTU. The lawyer states that that allegation is untrue since the applicants carried out the decisions of the union’s General Council “in all of their actions.”

The court documents state that the GTU’s Negotiating Committee, whose members were drawn from the General Council, had engaged the other Council members as well as branches about the negotiating proposals and eventually an agreement was signed with the State on August 21.

In addition to Ms McDonald, the other respondents are Mariska Williams, Meon Crawford, Joseph DeCunha and Elecia Barker.