Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The ac­tion that the Gov­ern­ment may or may not take on Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s tenure will not in­volve the Par­lia­ment, says Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds.

Hinds spoke yes­ter­day as spec­u­la­tion height­ened on whether Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s tenure, which ends to­mor­row will be ex­tend­ed.

She was ap­point­ed and ap­proved by the Par­lia­ment in Feb­ru­ary 2023. When she reached age 60 in May 2023, the con­tract was ex­tend­ed by the Cab­i­net for a year.

Hinds was asked yes­ter­day about the CoP’s sta­tus, es­pe­cial­ly since there is no sup­ple­men­tal item on the agen­da of to­day’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives sit­ting for mat­ters such as TTPS ap­point­ments.

Hinds said, “The ac­tion we may or may not take will not in­volve the Par­lia­ment. The ap­point­ment of an act­ing ap­point­ment of a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice will in­volve the Par­lia­ment.

“As the Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj first in­stance and Court of Ap­peal de­ci­sions made clear, in re­ject­ing his (Ma­haraj’s) ar­gu­ments, that the cur­rent CoP is al­ready ap­point­ed; what the Pres­i­dent, on the ad­vice on the Cab­i­net, may or may not do, at the ex­pi­ra­tion of her cur­rent ex­ten­sion, is ex­clu­sive­ly a mat­ter for the Ex­ec­u­tive. It does not in­volve the Par­lia­ment.”

Yes­ter­day, UNC MP Sad­dam Ho­sein, at an Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence, called on the Gov­ern­ment to in­di­cate what was ahead for the CoP.

“The Gov­ern­ment has the say whether or not they’re go­ing to ex­tend the con­tract for Mrs Hare­wood-Christo­pher. On Wednes­day, I be­lieve, she turns 61, she’s past re­tire­ment; she got an ex­ten­sion last year and she’d have been grant­ed a one-year ex­ten­sion.

“The Cab­i­net met last Thurs­day but we didn’t hear whether or not Cab­i­net fur­ther ex­tend­ed her con­tract for an­oth­er year or what­ev­er.”

Ho­sein added, “The Par­lia­ment meets Mon­day (to­day), and we were not giv­en any no­ti­fi­ca­tion by Her Ex­cel­len­cy for ap­point­ment of a CoP.

“I’m re­li­ably in­formed that there’s a par­ty at the of­fi­cial res­i­dence of the CoP on May 26 so that par­ty will de­ter­mine whether or not it’s a re­tire­ment par­ty or whether or not ‘we jam­ming still’.”

Dur­ing the 101st TTPS Sport and Fam­i­ly Day on Sat­ur­day at the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my, St James, Hare­wood-Christo­pher avoid­ed ques­tions from the me­dia fol­low­ing a prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny.

How­ev­er, she called for uni­ty with­in the TTPS dur­ing an ad­dress at the event.

She said, “In this fast-paced and dy­nam­ic world of law en­force­ment, uni­ty is not mere­ly a virtue but a strate­gic im­per­a­tive.

“As an or­gan­i­sa­tion, our strength lies not in the in­di­vid­ual prowess of any sin­gle of­fi­cer, but in our col­lec­tive abil­i­ty to stand to­geth­er as one co­he­sive unit.

“A star in­ves­ti­ga­tor shines even brighter when he or she shares his knowl­edge, tac­tics and skills with col­leagues.

“It is on­ly when we are unit­ed we can for­ti­fy our­selves against ad­ver­si­ty, over­come chal­lenges, and up­hold the prin­ci­ples of jus­tice and se­cu­ri­ty up­on which our so­ci­ety de­pends.”