Sat Ma­haraj

Part two

On March 25, 2011, the News­day re­port­ed, "PSC Chair­man Nizam Mo­hammed ap­pears be­fore Par­lia­ment's and Ser­vice Com­mis­sions Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) to dis­cuss the op­er­a­tions of the PSC.Mo­hammed says out of ten as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­ers of po­lice, three deputy com­mis­sion­ers, 15 se­nior su­per­in­ten­dents, there are no of­fi­cers of In­di­an ori­gin.He says this racial im­bal­ance should be dealt with giv­en the need for con­fi­dence in the po­lice."

The ques­tion that the Ma­ha Sab­ha asks, was Mr Mo­hammed cor­rect in what he said?We have al­ways sup­port­ed the ac­cu­ra­cy of his ob­ser­va­tion and we have con­sis­tent­ly quot­ed pro­fes­sors John La Guerre and Sel­wyn Ryan who pro­duced a vo­lu­mi­nous study for the gov­ern­ment of the day head­ed by Patrick Man­ning.

Their pub­li­ca­tion, Eth­nic­i­ty and Em­ploy­ment Prac­tices in Trinidad and To­ba­go, says: "All things be­ing equal, and giv­en the fact that In­do-Trinida­di­an can­di­dates are gen­er­al­ly bet­ter qual­i­fied (aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, it should fol­low that the num­bers of In­do-Trinida­di­ans se­lect­ed for train­ing should be high­er.It seems that they tend to do less well in the in­ter­view than do their Afro-Trinida­di­ans coun­ter­parts.

It con­tin­ued, "For the past sev­er­al years, the mem­bers of the in­ter­view­ing pan­el have all been Afro-Trinida­di­ans.Giv­en the fact that Trinidad is a mul­ti-eth­nic so­ci­ety with na­tion­als be­long­ing to two high­ly di­ver­gent main­stream cul­tures, name­ly In­do-Trinida­di­an and Afro-cre­ole, it is to be ex­pect­ed that cul­tur­al fac­tors could ac­count for dif­fer­en­tials in in­ter­view per­for­mance in favour of Afro-Trinida­di­ans."

De­spite the truth of Mo­hammed's state­ment, the Ex­press of April 4, 2011 re­port­ed, "Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards yes­ter­day act­ed de­ci­sive­ly in the mat­ter which has em­broiled the na­tion over the past ten days in race talk, some­times spawn­ing ac­ri­mo­nious race de­bate. At 11.22 am, the me­dia re­ceived Richard's brief state­ment that he had re­voked the ap­point­ment of Nizam Mo­hammed as chair­man and a mem­ber of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

"In a nut­shell, the Pres­i­dent in­di­cat­ed that Mo­hammed was re­moved for two rea­sons: a) he failed to per­form his du­ties in a re­spon­si­ble or time­ly man­ner and (b) he demon­strat­ed a lack of com­pe­tence to per­form his du­ties. The re­lease from the Pres­i­dent's Of­fice said, His Ex­cel­len­cy had ex­er­cised the pow­er vest­ed in him by Sec­tion 122 A (1) (d) and (f) of the Con­sti­tu­tion (as amend­ed).

Mo­hammed yes­ter­day blamed "racist jour­nal­ists" for his plight."It was Mo­hammed who on March 25 raised the is­sue of an eth­nic im­bal­ance in the Po­lice Ser­vice, pledg­ing as chair­man of the PSC to ad­dress the mat­ter with the help of Par­lia­ment.

Mo­hammed al­so sug­gest­ed that the im­bal­ance had made it dif­fi­cult for East In­di­ans, whom he said con­sti­tut­ed 50 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, to sup­port the po­lice ser­vice. With the ex­cep­tion of a few per­sons, Mo­hammed's state­ments to the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment were uni­ver­sal­ly con­demned."

The Ma­ha Sab­ha was one of the "few per­sons" who sup­port­ed Mo­hammed. In fact, we pub­licly called for the re­moval of Pres­i­dent Richards in­stead.It was wide­ly be­lieved that the de­ci­sion of Pres­i­dent Richards to re­move Mo­hammed as Chair­man and Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion could not be chal­lenged in the courts of T&T.

This be­lief has now been proved wrong, as Jus­tice Ju­dith Jones has shown in her Judg­ment of Feb­ru­ary 5, 2013, in High Court No CV2011–04918 be­tween Nizam Mo­hammed (claimant) and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (de­fen­dant.)F Ho­sein (se­nior coun­sel) in­struct­ed by G Mungals­ingh, R Dass and Ms Bridge­mo­hans­ingh ap­peared for the claimant. A Sinanan, (se­nior Coun­sel), G Ramdeen and V Dabideen were in­struct­ed by D Dil­raj-Ba­toos­ingh and B James for the de­fen­dant.

Jus­tice Jones ruled, "I am sat­is­fied that the claimant was not giv­en a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet and treat with the al­le­ga­tions made against him and the con­clu­sions drawn from these al­le­ga­tions.To my mind the cir­cum­stances un­der which the de­ci­sion was reached when ex­am­ined ob­jec­tive­ly do not demon­strate 'fair play in ac­tion'.

This is with­out a doubt an un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion but at the end of the day the is­sue for my de­ter­mi­na­tion is not whether the de­ci­sion of the Pres­i­dent was right or wrong but whether the cir­cum­stances un­der which it was made af­ford­ed the claimant a prop­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to an­swer the case made out against him."I do think so. In these cir­cum­stances I am sat­is­fied that the claimant's con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion to the right to pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness has been in­fringed. The claimant is there­fore en­ti­tled to the de­clara­to­ry re­lief sought.

The claimant has not sought any manda­to­ry or­ders or dam­ages and in the cir­cum­stances none will be grant­ed."Ac­cord­ing­ly, there will be a de­c­la­ra­tion that the ter­mi­na­tion by the Pres­i­dent of the claimant's ap­point­ment as a mem­ber of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion in pur­port­ed ex­er­cise of the pow­er un­der sec­tion 122A of the Con­sti­tu­tion has con­tra­vened:

(i) the claimant's right to the pro­tec­tion of the law as guar­an­teed to him by sec­tion 4(b) of the Con­sti­tu­tion; and

(ii) the claimant's right to a fair hear­ing in ac­cor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of fun­da­men­tal jus­tice for the ter­mi­na­tion of his rights and oblig­a­tions as guar­an­teed to him by sec­tion 5(2) of the Con­sti­tu­tion; and is ac­cord­ing­ly il­le­gal, null and void and of no ef­fect."

�2 Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha