Gail Alexan­der

If swim­mer George Bovell 111 may be feel­ing blue about yes­ter­day's Olympic swim­ming per­for­mance, it is any­one's guess at the mix­ture of emo­tions which may re­side with for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and deputy Jack Ewats­ki, con­sid­er­ing their un-ex­pect­ed­ly ear­ly de­par­ture from of­fice.

Mon­day's news of their ex­it even pipped last week­end's re­port­ed con­tentions about the Prime Min­is­ter's pur­chase of a Range Rover, a ve­hic­u­lar brand al­so owned by for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and al­so used by a cou­ple oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. That re­port mere­ly prompt­ed the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­istry to is­sue a six-para­graph dis­claimer to all min­istries on Tues­day deem­ing the sto­ry "mis­lead­ing," ques­tion­ing its mo­ti­va­tion and stat­ing it was a "dis­trac­tion."

Range Rovers how­ev­er failed to dis­tract from the re­al news which had been de­vel­op­ing since last week Fri­day when Gibbs and Ewats­ki re­signed and this has not been con­clud­ed with their res­ig­na­tion, which rather has led to fur­ther ques­tions about cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing their de­par­ture.

With both off the scene, the bur­den of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to re­solve T&T's crime prob­lem now sits square­ly on the shoul­ders of new Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, who must prove whether the two for­eign­ers com­pound­ed the polic­ing prob­lem or lo­cate where prob­lems ac­tu­al­ly lie-and have them rec­ti­fied.

Warn­er, com­ment­ing on the sit­u­a­tion on Wednes­day, might have af­ford­ed to be as benev­o­lent to­wards Gibbs and Ewats­ki as he came across since their ex­it gives him al­most com­plete con­trol in the ju­ris­dic­tion. This, de­spite that he has elicit­ed crit­i­cism about vi­o­la­tion of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers in the area.

In­deed, ques­tions about re­spect for the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers be­tween gov­ern­ment and in­de­pen­dent of­fice al­so arose Mon­day when the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced the res­ig­na­tion of the top cops rather than the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion which gov­erns this ju­ris­dic­tion (and lit­tle ex­pla­na­tion has come from her di­rec­tion.)

Since Gibbs' and Ewats­ki's ex­it fol­lowed crit­i­cisms from Warn­er, the six-month time­line he'd man­dat­ed for them to get things go­ing may now be ap-plied to his ef­forts in the sit­u­a­tion since he now has a free hand. Now in a do-or-die po­si­tion, Warn­er, still deal­ing with al-leg­ed FI­FA is­sues, may be able to over­pow­er per­cep­tion about some of the lat­ter if his lead­er­ship on the an­ti-crime front is suc­cess­ful. If not, his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer could be jeop­ar­dised.

If the for­mer top COPs felt pres­sured by Warn­er's bald warn­ings, his state­ments were still nowhere in the ter­ri­to­ry of the mis­placed-iron­i­cal­ly so-choice of con­tri­bu­tion by am­bas­sador Therese Bap­tiste- Cor­nelis for a re­cent Ger­man diplo­ma­cy sym­po­sium.

Gar­ner­ing sear­ing cri­tique, Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis may have meant it as her swan song since she'd not­ed the PM's June hints of changes in diplo­mat­ic post­ings. Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis' ad­dress has, how­ev­er, on­ly fur­ther val­i­dat­ed any de­ci­sion by the PM for changes in Gene­va. A Gov­ern­ment spokesman con­firmed changes are ahead con­cern­ing Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis' post­ing. The PM?said on June 25, for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy was of­fered a Gene­va post­ing.

Sandy is now abroad, ac­cord­ing to a text mes­sage to this col­umn and it seems like­ly he'll re­place Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis, ex-pect­ed back af­ter be­ing giv­en time to re­lo­cate from Gene­va. This and oth­er is­sues con­cern­ing T&T's mis­sions await For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an who was on two weeks' sick leave fol­low­ing re­port­ed stom­ach pains, now un­der con­trol.

Dook­er­an is ex­pect­ed at work next week af­ter a doc­tor's exa-mi­na­tion yes­ter­day morn­ing, his con­stituen­cy unit stat­ed. The unit sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed Dook­er­an will par­tic­i­pate at a con­stituen­cy func­tion to­day. The par­lia­men­tary break means longer re­cu­per­a­tion time for for­mer PM Man­ning who re­turned home Tues­day to a hero's wel­come. Walk­ing and speak­ing, though ap­pear­ing frail af­ter his Jan­u­ary stroke, Man­ning wore a nar­row brace strap wound around his up­per tor­so sup­port­ing his right arm.

Man­ning's progress is tes­ti­mo­ny to his well known de­ter­mi­na­tion, a qual­i­ty which made for PNM's suc­cess­ful res­ur­rec­tion post-NAR vic­to­ry, for re­turn­ing the PNM to Gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly and push­ing T&T?to­wards de­vel­oped coun­try sta­tus.

Cast­ing a pall over Tues­day's wel­come was the ab­sence of PNM?leader Kei­th Row­ley whose no-show was not on­ly poor form but his ac­tion re-newed the per­cep­tion of par­ty di­vi­sion un­der his lead­er­ship. A top of­fi­cial sub­se­quent­ly claimed Row­ley was "in­sult­ed by or­gan­is­ers."

Fol­low­ing crit­i­cism of his ab­sence from the Man­ning wel­come, Row­ley was no­tice­ably present at yes­ter­day's fu­ner­al of a PNM coun­cil­lor in South. The is­sues fol­lowed last week­end's move by PNM to con­tain di­vi­sion be­tween Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral's ex­ec­u­tive and Youth League mem­bers there.?

In a Ju­ly 28 let­ter to Row­ley and of­fi­cials, Youth Lea­guers ac­cused the PNM hi­er­ar­chy of turn­ing their backs on the unit's is­sues. They called on them to "fix our par­ty be­fore try­ing to fix T&T and stat­ed PNM couldn't at­tract T&T youths "if PNM?youths were be­ing pushed away, dis­re­spect­ed and dis­re­gard­ed."