“Hypocritical, disproportionate and nonsensical”
That’s the way Opposition senator Jayanti Lutchmedial described the Central Bank’s policy, as it relates to their attempt to fire an employee who is a candidate for the UNC in the upcoming Local Government elections.
This follows a Central Bank chauffeur receiving an injunction to stop him from being fired for being a local government election candidate.
Lyndon De Gannes is the UNC’s candidate for Malabar North for the August 14 election.
After filing his nomination on June 26, he got a letter from the bank reminding him of its code of conduct and common terms of conditions of employment which prevents employees from running for political office.
He was given until Friday to withdraw from the election.
However, Justice Kevin Ramcharan granted the injunction on Friday, which prevents the bank from firing him.
Speaking at UNC’s press conference on Sunday, Lutchmedial said De Gannes was simply “seeking to exercise his constitutional right to freedom of expression.”
“When you have internal policies of a State agency or any other organisation which attempts to curtail the constitutional rights and freedom of an individual which are enshrined in the highest law of our land – the Constitution – they must be proportionate.”
“And we have reviewed the jurisprudence coming out of the European Convention of Human Rights, we have looked at the Canadian jurisprudence where, in many cases, they have actually said what applies to, for example, a deputy minister cannot be the same rule that will apply to a cafeteria worker,” said Lutchmedial.
She said there is a lot of hypocrisy in the Central Bank’s policy especially as there are no policies against campaigning and politicking.
“You could hug up and take a picture with the candidate but you can’t be the candidate…”
Lutchmedia said she can understand if employees who are managers or responsible for reviewing monetary policies, etc, have this policy applied to them.
But: “You cannot have a broad brush…massive sweep of a policy.