"Un­for­tu­nate" is how Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar chose to de­scribe the man­ner in which her At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Anand Ram­lo­gan, sought to en­gage Ag Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert over the non-ac­tion of the po­lice on the loot­ing at the Gua­napo church.

The Prime Min­is­ter rushed the sub­ject off the agen­da of her news con­fer­ence at the Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, sug­gest­ing to the re­porters to the ef­fect that the sub­ject was closed, she hav­ing held dis­cus­sions with Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams, him­self now act­ing in the role of CoP. The hope is that notwith­stand­ing her eu­phemistic char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the mat­ter at the news con­fer­ence, the Prime Min­is­ter would have dealt pri­vate­ly and se­vere­ly with her young At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and urged him to stay away from at­tempt­ing to cross dan­ger­ous lines and the man­ner of his at­ti­tude to the com­mis­sion­er. The source of Ram­lo­gan's tirade against Philbert was the loot­ing at the Gua­napo church site and the seem­ing re­fusal of the po­lice to pre­vent the free-for-all cart­ing away of build­ing ma­te­ri­als from the site.

But in ad­di­tion to the at­tack on the com­mis­sion­er with "full force," Ram­lo­gan al­so chid­ed the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion for not se­cur­ing the site, more so that the com­mis­sion is in­volved in in­ves­ti­gat­ing the fi­nanc­ing and oth­er as­pects of the church project. But Ram­lo­gan's at­tack on the com­mis­sion­er was most tren­chant: he, not too diplo­mat­i­cal­ly, sug­gest­ed that the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Brigadier Sandy, should point Philbert in the di­rec­tion of his sup­posed neg­li­gence. He warned that if he, the Ag CoP, "does not have good an­swers his tenure is com­ing to an end and it may very well be that it will come to an ac­cel­er­at­ed, pre­ma­ture end," re­port­ed the news­pa­pers. AG Ram­lo­gan went fur­ther to out­line how the task of get­ting rid of Philbert would be pre­ced­ed with, say­ing that a new Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, the body which has the pow­er to in­stall a new Ag CoP, and which ap­point­ed Philbert to act for an­oth­er three months, would have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to cut his tenure short.

Those are some dan­ger­ous wa­ters for AG Ram­lo­gan to go swim­ming and/or fish­ing in. They are dan­ger­ous be­cause it could be in­ter­pret­ed that the AG is be­fore hand de­ter­min­ing the agen­da for the new PSC and what de­ci­sions it should take in re­spect to the Ag CoP. Fur­ther, when it is con­sid­ered that it is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic to ap­point a PSC, af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, the con­clu­sion can eas­i­ly be ar­rived at that here is the AG speak­ing as if he (the Gov­ern­ment) has charge of the ap­point­ment and the func­tion of the PSC. Sure­ly the AG needs no one to tell him that the PSC, a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly ap­point­ed body, has the pow­er to set its own agen­da of work and not fol­low the agen­da of the AG or any­one else, and would cer­tain­ly have the pow­er and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to act in its own de­lib­er­ate judg­ment as to whether or not Ag CoP Philbert was in dere­lic­tion of his du­ty.�

In the cir­cum­stances, the re­sponse of Philbert was most ap­pro­pri­ate: "The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has ex­hib­it­ed con­tempt, dis­dain, bias and an­i­mos­i­ty to the of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice." The AG al­so charged Ag CoP Philbert for ig­nor­ing the man­date of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions to act to se­cure the site. Here again the CoP had a very dif­fer­ent take on that con­tention, say­ing that he and the DPP agreed on the tech­ni­cal, le­gal con­cerns about the po­lice se­cur­ing the site and that he had done all that was re­quired of him by the DPP. In fact Ag CoP Philbert not­ed in his re­lease to the me­dia that the AG came to a con­clu­sion on what was agreed to be­tween him­self and the DPP "with­out con­sult­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Ag) or ap­pris­ing him­self of the true ad­vice giv­en to the com­mis­sion­er by the DPP."�We have not heard from the DPP on the ve­rac­i­ty of the two state­ments. There are al­so dif­fer­ing le­gal opin­ions on who had the pow­er to act to pre­vent the loot­ing. But even if it is as­sumed that the CoP had been neg­li­gent of his du­ties or not un­der­stand­ing of them, did cor­rec­tive ac­tion re­quire the "vex, vex" pub­lic re­sponse of the AG? As oth­ers have ob­served, AG Ram­lo­gan has to make the tran­si­tion from be­ing the brash ad­ver­sar­i­al and ma­cho de­fence at­tor­ney to adopt­ing the po­si­tion of the chief le­gal of­fi­cer in the Gov­ern­ment.

In such a po­si­tion he is ex­pect­ed to avoid un­nec­es­sary an­tag­o­nism amongst gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions and cer­tain­ly not to al­low the per­cep­tion to de­vel­op that maybe he is cross­ing over in­to ter­ri­to­ry in which he has no ju­ris­dic­tion. Soon enough, if such in­tem­per­ate be­hav­iour con­tin­ues, the per­cep­tion will arise that the AG is en­gaged in po­lit­i­cal war­fare against those he deems to be "en­e­mies" of the rul­ing par­ty. Clear­ly un­der­stand­ing the dif­fi­cul­ty of the sit­u­a­tion aris­ing be­cause of her AG's mis­ad­ven­ture, and bring­ing her own ma­tu­ri­ty to the sit­u­a­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar called to­geth­er the po­lice hi­er­ar­chy and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to de­vel­op a strat­e­gy to act on Gua­napo and oth­er mat­ters con­cerned with na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. Such an ini­tia­tive, tak­en first be­fore con­fronting the CoP, would have cer­tain­ly achieved the ob­jec­tive of the AG for the ac­tion re­quired to pre­vent the loot­ing.�The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship has se­ri­ous work to do to trans­form the poli­ty and econ­o­my, to redi­rect so­cial de­vel­op­ment and to counter crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

In­deed, the par­ty has its own in­ter­nal struc­tur­ing and mould­ing to do amongst its con­stituent el­e­ments; and it should not be for­got­ten that it is prepar­ing and mo­bil­is­ing for lo­cal gov­ern­ment polls and look­ing to­wards pre­sent­ing a bud­get in cir­cum­stances of a pro­ject­ed $7 bil­lion bud­get deficit. A gov­ern­ment with the kind of ma­jor­i­ty and good­will held by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship can­not af­ford to waste it by get­ting in­to un­nec­es­sary and un­seem­ly fights with the CoP. The Part­ner­ship has to save and nur­ture that po­lit­i­cal cur­ren­cy to use when there is fall­out from the dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic de­ci­sions it must in­evitably take.