DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Court of Ap­peal has be­gun to weigh in on a law­suit chal­leng­ing Gov­ern­ment’s move to ex­tend the term of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher by a year be­fore she at­tained re­tire­ment age last year.

Dur­ing a hear­ing at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre, yes­ter­day, ap­pel­late judges Prakash Moo­sai, Mark Mo­hammed, and James Aboud heard sub­mis­sions in the ap­peal brought by po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj af­ter his case was dis­missed by High Court Judge Ricky Rahim in Jan­u­ary.

In the law­suit, Ma­haraj chal­lenged a de­ci­sion tak­en by the Cab­i­net to ex­tend Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s term by a year un­der Sec­tion 75 of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act, be­fore she reached re­tire­ment age on May 15, last year.

The leg­is­la­tion em­pow­ers the Pres­i­dent to ex­tend the term of a first di­vi­sion of­fi­cer, who is due to re­tire if it is in the na­tion­al in­ter­est to do so.

Po­lice of­fi­cers can re­ceive two fur­ther one-year ex­ten­sions based on an­nu­al per­for­mance re­views.

Ma­haraj’s le­gal team con­tend­ed that the pro­vi­sion is in­con­sis­tent with Sec­tion 123 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which gives the PolSC the pow­er to rec­om­mend the ap­point­ment or re­moval of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice (DCPs) to be ap­proved by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

They point­ed out that the con­sti­tu­tion­al process sought to en­sure that there was no po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

In re­sponse to the case, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the Cab­i­net re­lied on an af­fi­davit from Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion Corey Har­ri­son, who serves as sec­re­tary for the PolSC.

In the doc­u­ment, Har­ri­son claimed that the PolSC was aware of Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s age and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of her re­ceiv­ing an ex­ten­sion. He al­so point­ed out that sim­i­lar ex­ten­sions were af­ford­ed to for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­ers James Philbert and Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions, Ma­haraj’s lawyer Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, claimed that the pro­vi­sion in­fringes the in­de­pen­dence of the of­fice as it makes a po­lice com­mis­sion­er be­hold­en to the Gov­ern­ment to re­ceive ex­ten­sions.

“A po­lit­i­cal­ly con­trolled com­mis­sion­er could in­fect all the ranks,” he said.

He claimed that when the leg­is­la­tion was passed in 2006, Par­lia­ment in­tend­ed to in­su­late the of­fice from po­lit­i­cal con­trol mak­ing the PolSC re­spon­si­ble for ap­point­ing the com­mis­sion­er and DCPs.

Re­spond­ing to the pan­el, which point­ed out the pro­vi­sion was passed by Par­lia­ment, Ram­lo­gan claimed that un­con­sti­tu­tion­al laws could be re­viewed by the courts.

In his sub­mis­sions, Se­nior Coun­sel Rus­sell Mar­tineau claimed that Jus­tice Rahim de­cid­ed the case cor­rect­ly.

He not­ed that while the ap­point­ment of the com­mis­sion­er is sub­ject to Par­lia­men­tary over­sight, Gov­ern­ment, which in­cludes Cab­i­net mem­bers, has the fi­nal say as on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty is re­quired for ap­proval.

He al­so point­ed out that the Pres­i­dent had to act based on the ad­vice of the Cab­i­net.

“Cab­i­net can give ad­vice but it is for the Pres­i­dent to take it,” he said.

Mar­tineau al­so claimed that Par­lia­ment could not be fault­ed for in­tro­duc­ing the pro­vi­sion as po­lit­i­cal in­su­la­tion is not ab­solute un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice Rahim ruled that the ex­ten­sion was not un­con­sti­tu­tion­al as con­tend­ed.

The ap­peal pan­el re­served its judg­ment af­ter hear­ing the sub­mis­sions.

Ma­haraj was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Kent Sam­lal, Natasha Bis­ram, Robert Ab­dool-Mitchell, and Vishaal Siewsaran.

Rishi Dass, SC, and Vanes­sa Gopaul rep­re­sent­ed the AG’s Of­fice.