It's back to square one for the troubled National Union of Bank Employees (NUBE) - the Kuala Lumpur High Court today said that the Director-General of Trade Unions (DGTU) has no power to conduct fresh polls to end the three-year leadership dispute in the banking union.

This sets back efforts by the two NUBE factions - led respectively by Abdul Jalil Hamid and Mohamed Fauzi Shamsuddin - to conduct a fresh election to determine a legitimate leadership for the union.

Justice Raus Sharif, who is presiding over several related matters pending in court, ruled that the DGTU was not empowered under the Trade Unions Act 1959 to directly or indirectly conduct an election.

The decision has effectively left no one with the authority to hold fresh polls as an earlier court order had declared the two warring factions 'illegal'. The tenure of both groups, which have engaged in a protracted legal tussle over the years, have since expired.

To get around the issue, a 20-member caretaker committee, set up by 2,000 NUBE delegates at a special conference in February as part of a mediation effort by the Malaysian Trades Union Congress to help facilitate a fresh election, had hoped the DGTU could call for new polls.

Contacted today, Ambiga Sreenevasan, counsel for the caretaker committee which had filed the court application, said the decision was based on a strict interpretation of the law.

"We are contemplating whether or not to appeal. If we decide to appeal, we have to do it quickly," she said.

"If we decide not to appeal, then we need to consider the possibility of filing another application or find other steps to facilitate the conduct of a fresh poll. This has been going on for far too long and the members are really suffering."

The affairs of the banking sector union with a 28,000-strong membership has ground to a halt following the internal crisis, prompting banks to stop negotiations on a collective agreement.

'Shallow victory'

Echoing Ambiga's concerns for NUBE members, D Kalai, counsel for Mohamed Fauzi's faction, said the dispute should end soon as the union was currently defenceless against outsourcing exercises and liberalisation of banking services.

Describing today's decision as a "shallow victory", he said it had left all parties in a limbo.

"All of us want an election ... it's only a matter of who should conduct it. We want an election to reinstate a legitimate leadership and ensure that the union is functional again," he said when contacted.

On June 18, the Court of Appeal rejected an appeal filed by Mohamed Fauzi's group against the High Court decision last October declaring both factions illegal. The faction is seeking to overturn the decision at the Federal Court.

Kalai said the Federal Court has yet to fix a hearing date and they were still waiting for the grounds of the Court of Appeal decision and the written judgment.

"We hope the Federal Court would overturn the appellate decision and declare Mohamed Fauzi's pre-Oct 31, 2001 team as the legitimate exco. Then, they can proceed with the fresh poll and get on with the union's business."

R Sivarasa, counsel for Abdul Jalil's group, could not be reached for comment.

The NUBE factions have two other matters pending before Raus, set to be heard on Oct 21 and 22.