A RIGHT TO vote for a local government representative is for the people and not the Parliament.
This was the main thrust of the majority of the Privy Council on Thursday as three judges upheld a legal challenge against Government's extension of the term of incumbent local government representatives by a year, without going to the electorate.
"It is inimical to a representative democracy that the representatives are chosen by anyone other than the electorate. It is not for Parliament, still less the Government, to choose the representative.
"The right to vote out representatives is as important as the right to vote in representatives," the Privy Council judges said.
Thursday’s ruling of TT highest court, based in London, was precedent-setting.
It is widely known in legal circles that the third time is not the charm as only in exceptional cases will the Privy Council entertain appeals against concurrent findings from local courts.
It was also rare that both president of the UK’s supreme court Lord Robert Reed, and his deputy Lord Patrick Hodge, sat on the same panel in March along with three other judges, who in a last-minute decision on Wednesday, opted not to adopt their usual course of promulgation of the ruling, but instead held a sitting to deliver it.
It was delivered at 8.30 am (TT time) on Thursday and lasted mere minutes.
The local government challenge was led by social activist Ravi Balgobin-Maharaj who contended that Justice Jacqueline Wilson and the Appeal Court got it wrong by consecutively rejecting his case in November 2022 and February.
Balgobin-Maharaj complained about the passage of amendments in 2022 which extended the term of local government councillors to four years and also allowed the election to be delayed by a year.
The election was due between December-March, but the partial proclamation of local government reform legislation allowed the extension of the terms of councillors and aldermen, who were elected in 2019, to four years.
The amendments were passed without Opposition support.
COUNCIL'S RULING
In his complaint, Balgobin-Maharaj said he became concerned after Local Government Minister Faris Al-Rawi announced Government's intention to proclaim certain sections of the legislation.
These sections sought to increase the terms of councillors from three years to four years.
Balgobin-Maharaj contended Al-Rawi misinterpreted the effect of the legislation when he announced plans to apply it to incumbent councillors and aldermen. He maintained it did not have a retroactive effect.
Lords Reed, Hodge and David Richards, who delivered the majority ruling, agreed with the arguments of Balgobin-Maharaj’s attorney Anand Ramlogan, SC, who led Peter Carter, KC, and a team of attorneys from Ramlogan's Freedom Law Chambers, on the construction of amendments to the Municipal Corporations Act (MCA).
Richards said local government reform amendments could only apply to representatives in the future, admitting though, there was a degree of ambiguity in the language as it rel
