Brent Zephyrine

The at­tempts of gov­ern­ment to re­move two high-rank­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials from of­fice-for­mer chief jus­tice Sat Shar­ma and for­mer Speak­er of the House Oc­c­ah Sea­paul-both of whom chose not to step down amidst pub­lic con­dem­na­tion, need to be con­sid­ered in light of the un­known fu­ture the chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) Nizam Mo­hammed now faces. Mo­hammed, like his two em­bat­tled pre­de­ces­sors of pub­lic of­fice (Shar­ma and Sea­paul), has stuck to his guns de­spite grow­ing views that his con­duct has tar­nished what Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ferred to as "the trust that is re­posed in him."

Both Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley (among oth­ers) have cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly crit­i­cised Mo­hammed's al­le­ga­tions of dis­crim­i­na­tion and the need for eth­nic bal­ance with­in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice. Up­on close ex­am­i­na­tion, is­sues sur­round­ing res­ig­na­tion, con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments, sus­pen­sions, im­peach­ment tri­als as well as the no­tion of "pub­lic opin­ion," all ap­pear to com­prise gov­ern­ment's tra­di­tion­al way of deal­ing with the is­sue of re­vok­ing (or at­tempt­ing to re­voke) the ap­point­ments of key state of­fi­cials.

Sat Shar­ma

In 2006, then chief jus­tice Sat Shar­ma was re­lieved of his du­ties by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards at a time when the po­lice were try­ing to ex­e­cute a war­rant on a charge that he (Shar­ma) had at­tempt­ed to per­vert the course of pub­lic jus­tice by try­ing to in­flu­ence Chief Mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc Nicolls to rule in favour of for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day in his in­tegri­ty tri­al. Shar­ma was re­called to du­ty on March 26, 2007, but be­cause of the ap­par­ent "stain," these al­le­ga­tions had cast on the ju­di­cia­ry, he was lat­er sus­pend­ed by Pres­i­dent Richards on June 13, 2007, af­ter then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning in­di­cat­ed that he had rec­om­mend­ed the ap­point­ment of a three-mem­ber tri­bunal to de­ter­mine whether Shar­ma should be im­peached. The 58-page re­port on the Lord Mustill tri­bunal found that there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to im­peach Shar­ma.

Oc­c­ah Sea­paul

In 1995, the gov­ern­ment of the day sought to have Sea­paul re­moved as Speak­er of the House be­cause ques­tions aris­ing out of her in­volve­ment in a court mat­ter in which she was the com­plainant, where the mag­is­trate dis­missed charges she had brought against au­to re­pair­man and busi­ness part­ner, Vic­tor Jat­tan. She was asked to demit of­fice be­cause of the neg­a­tive pub­lic per­cep­tion held both of her im­age and of­fice as a re­sult of the court mat­ter but had re­fused to do so and as such, the Gov­ern­ment filed a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in Par­lia­ment against her. Sea­paul was then ac­cused of act­ing in her own self-in­ter­est when she omit­ted a sec­tion of a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment which was brought be­fore Par­lia­ment to have her va­cate of­fice forth­with. She was sub­se­quent­ly placed un­der house ar­rest-a move which in­voked a State of Emer­gency-in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate the pas­sage of the amend­ment, ef­fec­tive­ly oust­ing her as Speak­er.

In Mo­hammed's own words...

A col­umn writ­ten by Mo­hammed and dat­ed Ju­ly 9, 1995, in which he opined on the sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing the re­moval of then House Speak­er Oc­c­ah Sea­paul from of­fice, cit­ed the dan­ger in act­ing sole­ly on the pop­u­lar views of the pub­lic.

He said of the is­sue:

"One can­not sim­ply ask a high of­fi­cial to va­cate pub­lic of­fice be­cause of pub­lic per­cep­tion which may be un­in­formed or in­ac­cu­rate... Peo­ple's rep­u­ta­tions are too sa­cred to be de­stroyed by the fick­le wind of pub­lic opin­ion," he said. "What­ev­er the per­cep­tion, Gov­ern­ment and Par­lia­ment should act based on facts." Whether these sce­nar­ios ex­am­ined bear any strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties to any de­ter­mi­na­tion re­gard­ing the fu­ture of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair­man, was a mat­ter which at this point re­mained-as Per­sad-Bisses­sar said-en­tire­ly in the hands of Pres­i­dent Richards.