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A High Court judge has blocked to­day’s sched­uled elec­tions of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, cit­ing se­ri­ous con­cerns raised by a group of of­fi­cers about the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty of can­di­dates and the col­lec­tion of dues from mem­bers not cov­ered by the Po­lice Ser­vice Act.

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad grant­ed an emer­gency in­junc­tion on Mon­day morn­ing, bar­ring the As­so­ci­a­tion from pro­ceed­ing with its in­ter­nal elec­tions and tem­porar­i­ly dis­qual­i­fy­ing for­mer pres­i­dent Anand Rame­sar from con­test­ing, pend­ing a full hear­ing on whether he is law­ful­ly el­i­gi­ble to run.

The case was filed by sev­en of­fi­cers op­er­at­ing un­der the ban­ner “Voic­es in Blue,” in­clud­ing Wen­dell War­rick, Ron­ny Lee Gopaul, and Rox­anne Paul. They ar­gued that the As­so­ci­a­tion im­prop­er­ly col­lect­ed dues and ex­er­cised au­thor­i­ty over Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP), Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice, and Tran­sit Po­lice of­fi­cers who fall out­side the le­gal scope of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act, which gov­erns the As­so­ci­a­tion’s man­date.