Mtuc S Disputing Parties Agree To Hold Polls Within 90 Days

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In a consent order, the Court of Appeal said the MTUC elections must be held as per its constitution and RM300,000 could be spent to carry out the function.
PUTRAJAYA: There appears to be light at the end of the tunnel for the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) following a Court of Appeal consent order today.
A three-member bench chaired by Justice Azizah Nawawi allowed for a joint special committee to be established to hold the MTUC special delegates conference within 90 days from today.
Two members of the committee will comprise MTUC’s affiliated unions aligned with president Effendy Abdul Ghani, and another two from a faction led by National Union of Bank Employees (NUBE) general secretary J Solomon.
A fifth person would be appointed by both groups.
Azizah, who sat with Justices Azizul Azmi Adnan and Firuz Jaffril, said the committee would conduct the elections as per MTUC’s constitution and could spend RM300,000 to carry out the function.
The order stated that the committee would submit a report and financial accounts to the incoming committee 14 days after the elections.
During the 90 days, the committee would also oversee the day-to-day administration of MTUC.
Lawyers Francis Pereira and Gowri Ramanathan represented MTUC’s office bearers, who include Effendy, while counsel Ravi Nekoo appeared for several unions and NUBE.
The lawyers confirmed the content of the order with FMT.
Earlier, another group of unions aligned to secretary-general Kamarul Baharin withdrew its appeal against an Aug 11, 2023 High Court order which declared MTUC’s triennial delegates’ conference in 2022 as null and void after claiming it violated several provisions in its constitution.
Lawyer Haniff Khatri Abdulla, who represented this group, confirmed his clients’ withdrawal from the appeal.
A group of MTUC’s major affiliates led by NUBE and another by its former president, Halim Mansor, filed two suits against the principal office bearers elected at the conference, claiming they had violated the congress’s constitution.
The 16 unions sought a declaration that the elections were invalid.
They also sought an order to stop 19 new office bearers elected for the 2023-2025 term from discussing or making decisions on policy matters pending the disposal of the application.
The plaintiffs also asked the court to decide whether the determination of matters complained of fell exclusively under the power and within the purview of the Registrar of Societies.
In his ruling, Judicial Commissioner Choong Yeow Choy said MTUC’s constitutional provisions must be safeguarded so that its good name and key role it played in the labour movement landscape were not tainted or compromised.
However, Choong granted a stay to suspend his ruling pending the disposal of the union’s appeal to the Court of Appeal.
Pending the appeal, the office bearers in MTUC had split into three groups. - FMT

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