Gail Alexan­der

The in­de­pen­dence of the of­fice of po­lice com­mis­sion­er or act­ing?com­mis­sion­er will be threat­ened if the hold­er is se­lect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment, says Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal. See­ta­hal was speak­ing at Tues­day's pan­el dis­cus­sion com­mem­o­rat­ing the 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence held by the Na­tion­al Archives Di­vi­sion of the new Min­istry of Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion. The theme was "50 years come and gone-How Yuh Feel? The Emer­gence of T&T." See­ta­hal took is­sue with the 2006 amend­ment to the Po­lice Ser­vice Act which al­lows for the com­mis­sion­er to be ap­proved by Par­lia­ment. She said it was "an er­ror."

She said if the com­mis­sion­er were ap­point­ed by the Par­lia­ment, the ma­jor­i­ty would pre­vail, and af­ter 50 years of In­de­pen­dence that sit­u­a­tion was not de­sir­able. She not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment holds the ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment and said if a CoP or act­ing CoP was ap­point­ed by an in­de­pen­dent com­mis­sion, there would be dif­fer­ent con­sid­er­a­tions. She ques­tioned some of the as­pects of the process un­der the law, in­clud­ing how a for­eign agency would know what was suit­able as CoP for T&T. See­ta­hal said there ought to be a sep­a­ra­tion in the process and there was need to re­vis­it the law to get rid of the neg­a­tive as­pects. She said there should be some in­su­la­tion in the process to avoid any di­rect in­flu­ence of the Gov­ern­ment or any per­cep­tion of it. See­ta­hal lat­er told the T&T?Guardian she would soon be head­ing to Guyana to serve on a com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the Ju­ly ri­ots in that coun­try. She said she had re­ceived her in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment and would be work­ing with four oth­er com­mis­sion­ers on the task.

Pub­lic pres­sure must be mount­ed to en­sure promis­es for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form are kept, says UWI lec­tur­er and his­to­ri­an Dr Brins­ley Sama­roo. Speak­ing at Tues­day night's pan­el dis­cus­sion held by the Na­tion­al Archives at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts, Sama­roo said cul­tur­al­ly T&T was one na­tion, but it was not one po­lit­i­cal­ly. He said the on­ly way out was via con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form to make all po­lit­i­cal com­bat­ants work to­geth­er, but no par­ty want­ed to un­der­take that, whether PNM?ore UNC. Sama­roo al­so ad­vo­cat­ed that civ­il so­ci­ety play a lead­ing role in en­sur­ing mat­ters were dealt with. He said the peo­ple al­ways want­ed to have one na­tion and many were un­hap­py that T&T was two na­tions po­lit­i­cal­ly. He said T&T was one in 1937 in the days of Tubal Uri­ah But­ler and Adri­an Co­la Rien­zi, and had al­so come to­geth­er in 1970, 1986 with the NAR and "to a less­er ex­tent 2012" with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. Sama­roo said all the prime min­is­ters of T&T, in­clud­ing the present Prime Min­is­ter, had an au­thor­i­tar­i­an streak, which was not dis­hon­esty, but an in­her­it­ed trait from colo­nial days.