Geisha Kow­lessar

Three top mem­bers of the De­fence Force were yes­ter­day el­e­vat­ed to high­er po­si­tions and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er crit­i­cised the cri­te­ria for ap­point­ing a po­lice com­mis­sion­er, de­scrib­ing them as "most op­pres­sive." Warn­er made the an­nounce­ment at a me­dia ap­pre­ci­a­tion func­tion held at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

From Feb­ru­ary 1, Brig Ken­rick Ma­haraj will hold the rank of ma­jor gen­er­al, Com­mand­ing Of­fi­cer An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer will be Vice-Chief of De­fence Staff and Col Rod­ney Smart will as­sume the po­si­tion of head of the T&T Reg­i­ment. For the se­lec­tion process for a po­lice com­mis­sion­er to be ef­fec­tive Warn­er said, the changes must first be made in Par­lia­ment.

He said he had al­ready spo­ken to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan to de­ter­mine how best the law could be amend­ed. "What do you tell a man, that every six months he has to act? And if we con­tin­ue to go along the road we are go­ing, it would take at least two years be­fore the process is com­plet­ed." Warn­er said the pro­mo­tions of Ma­haraj, Phillips-Spencer and Smart were long over­due.

Stephen Williams, who was a deputy po­lice com­mis­sion­er, was made act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er when Cana­di­ans Dwayne Gibbs and Jack Ewats­ki re­signed. They were com­mis­sion­er and deputy com­mis­sion­er re­spec­tive­ly. Williams was ap­point­ed to act on Au­gust 7, 2012, and was giv­en a six-month ex­ten­sion by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion on Thurs­day.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence last year, the com­mis­sion's chair­man, Prof Ramesh De­osaran, said the com­mis­sion was in "won­der­land" over the time frame for the ap­point­ment of a sub­stan­tive com­mis­sion­er, and the se­lec­tion process was a "tan­gled web." Warn­er agreed that the process was in­ef­fec­tive. "Mr Williams, the ex­ten­sion may give you some com­fort, but it doesn't give me any, be­cause it is the most op­pres­sive sys­tem of ap­point­ment I have seen any­where," he said.

"This is wrong, it is un­par­don­able. It should nev­er have hap­pened. There is nowhere is the world where a com­mis­sion­er of po­lice has to go through this tor­ture of ap­point­ment." Warn­er gave a per­son­al un­der­tak­ing to en­sure the process was not un­nec­es­sar­i­ly de­layed.