THE eight-member executive of the Police Federation yesterday ditched their chairman, Inspector Handel Morgan, in a surprising majority vote that is likely to cause deep fissures in the organisation.

No member of the executive was willing last night to give the alignment of the votes or say what specifically precipitated the action, except that there was a loss of confidence by the majority in Morgan’s leadership.

“He was moved out by a majority vote at the weekly meeting of the central executive today,” the Federation’s immediate past president, Sergeant David White, told the Observer . “. I don’t want to go into specifics.”

Pressed about what had angered the executive into so drastic a move, White said: “His leadership direction and the general running of the Federation affairs was not good. But as I said before, I don’t want to go into specifics.”

Morgan himself did not take telephone calls and Inspector Steve Moodie, considered to be his key ally on the executive, declined to comment.

Moodie is the secretary of the Inspectors Branch Board, one of the constituent groups of the Police Federation, which represents members of the constabulary between the ranks of constable and inspector.

The Inspectors Branch Board was meeting last night and yesterday’s action was expected to be a key issue on their agenda.

Morgan has been in office for a mere four months, being elected chairman after a stormy annual conference in July and a fight between the Inspectors Branch group and police chief Francis Forbes.

Forbes, acting on a claim by an inspector, Max Marshelleck, that he was disfranchised in an Inspectors Board Branch election, attempted to get the court to halt the vote.

The police got an initial injunction which prevented the inspectors from electing their representative to the Federation’s executive, but the court eventually ruled that he had no real basis for interfering.

Insiders say that Morgan has had a rocky time since he assumed office, being at odds with the top brass over his failure to lead the Police Federation into an agreement between the government and trade unions that effectively froze the salaries of public sector workers for two years.

Morgan ran into trouble with members of his executive over his reported statement that he could not endorse a plan by the authorities to bring foreign police to work in Jamaica.

Although he denied making the statement to the Observer, six of the eight members of the Federation’s executive issued a statement saying that he had “either misspoke or was misquoted”.

The executive members who signed that October 23 statement were:

. Cpl Raymond Wilson;

. Det Sgt Daniel McKinley;

. Sgt David White;

. Cpl Hartley Stewart;

. Con Cecil McCalla; and

. Con Mark Goffe.

Significantly neither Morgan nor Moodie signed.

It was being speculated last night that it was the six who issued the statement last month that voted against Morgan at yesterday’s meeting.

With Morgan’s removal yesterday, Corporal Raymond Wilson of the St Thomas Police Division was immediately elected chairman. Wilson is a former general secretary of the Federation.

The Federation’s research officer, Corporal Hartley Stewart of Kingston Central Division, was voted in as general secretary.

Worried police officers last night feared a prolonged quarrel developing in the Police Federation and warned that the organisation could end up in a divisive quarrel, according to one officer, “like the Jamaica Labour Party”.

“It is high politics a going on in the Federation’s central executive,” said one sergeant, who declined to be named.