Last week, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives ap­proved pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tions for two peo­ple to serve as act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in the face of a firestorm in­side the Po­lice Ser­vice.

In do­ing so, the process that was fol­lowed was based on amend­ments made to the Con­sti­tu­tion in 2006 to im­port in­to our par­lia­men­tary sys­tem as­pects of the Unit­ed States pres­i­den­tial sys­tem that mim­ic US Sen­ate ap­proval by our House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the Com­mis­sion­er and Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice be­fore as­sum­ing du­ties.

These 2006 re­forms changed the way the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) and the Po­lice Ser­vice op­er­ate. Then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had this to say in pi­lot­ing the leg­is­la­tion that made the changes: “We wish to make it clear, Mr Speak­er, that this ap­proach does not rep­re­sent for us an ide­al; rather, it is a com­pro­mised ap­proach to which we have agreed to sub­scribe, and we will see over time, with the ef­flux­ion of time, how well the sys­tem works, or how well it does not work. If it turns out that the sys­tem is not meet­ing the as­pi­ra­tions of hon Mem­bers of this House, then we be­lieve we pos­sess the ma­tu­ri­ty, again, to sit around a ta­ble, ho­n­ourable Mem­bers of Gov­ern­ment and ho­n­ourable Mem­bers op­po­site, and con­tin­ue our search for an ap­proach that more close­ly meets the re­quire­ments of Par­lia­ment with­in the con­text of the so­ci­ety in which this Par­lia­ment op­er­ates.” (Hansard, House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, March 15, 2006, p 8).

This is the on­ly ser­vice com­mis­sion that has these dif­fer­ent pro­ce­dures as­so­ci­at­ed with its op­er­a­tions. The Prime Min­is­ter’s non-pub­lic ve­to was re­placed by a pub­lic vote in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, which makes the Gov­ern­ment of the day pub­licly de­clare their pref­er­ences for the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nees for Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, or mem­bers of the PSC.

This was an at­tempt at try­ing to im­port an Amer­i­can-style process of hav­ing the Pres­i­dent nom­i­nate pro­posed in­di­vid­u­als and the Par­lia­ment rat­i­fy these nom­i­nees. Un­like the Wash­ing­ton mod­el, there is no ad­vice and con­sent role where­by nom­i­nees can be grilled by par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tees be­fore the vote, and in­di­vid­ual MPs do not have the same lev­el of choice to vote freely as US sen­a­tors, who do not face any screen­ing process where par­ty lead­ers can de­ter­mine their fu­ture can­di­da­cy and no cross­ing the floor penal­ties for de­fy­ing any par­ty line.

The then leader of the Op­po­si­tion Bas­deo Pan­day, had this to say about these amend­ments in the 2006 de­bate on the suite of Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and Po­lice Ser­vice leg­is­la­tion: “I have read cer­tain crit­i­cisms on the re­moval of the ve­to com­ing from wannabe politi­cians that the Prime Min­is­ter still has the pow­er of ve­to, which he can ex­er­cise by his ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment. First­ly, to in­sist oth­er­wise than a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty—that there be a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty—would in ef­fect be trans­fer­ring that ve­to to the Op­po­si­tion.

The Op­po­si­tion would now be able to ve­to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. I am talk­ing about the pos­i­tive res­o­lu­tion as op­posed to the spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty. We de­cid­ed against that be­cause the Gov­ern­ment has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to deal with crime and, there­fore, it can­not put the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ap­point the com­mis­sion­er on the Op­po­si­tion. They must be re­spon­si­ble at every turn. We thought that was a good sug­ges­tion; that in­sist­ing on a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty was not the right thing to do.” (Hansard, House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, March 15, 2006, p 12).

Thir­ty years af­ter be­com­ing a re­pub­lic, a po­lit­i­cal di­men­sion was in­tro­duced in­to the process for the ap­point­ment of mem­bers of the re­vised PSC, as well as se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers, which would sub­ject the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nees to par­lia­men­tary de­bate be­fore en­dorse­ment or re­jec­tion. There are no com­mit­tee hear­ings, just a straight par­ty-line vote in the House where­by the Gov­ern­ment has one po­si­tion and the Op­po­si­tion has an­oth­er.

It was ap­par­ent that the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion was not in favour of this method, while the Pan­day-led Op­po­si­tion was, and a com­pro­mise was made.

Pan­day want­ed the Gov­ern­ment of the day to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the ap­point­ments, while Man­ning want­ed a neg­a­tive res­o­lu­tion (to avoid de­bate), and Pan­day want­ed an af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion (to force de­bate). Nei­ther want­ed a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty.

The Pres­i­dent re­tained the right to de­ter­mine the chair­man of the PSC from among the ap­proved mem­bers, while the PSC could on­ly act to make ap­point­ments af­ter par­lia­men­tary ap­proval had been se­cured.

The con­sen­sus across the aisle may not be there to re­move this process now, and this de­fi­cient hy­brid may be around for some time. So far, the process has be­come very po­lit­i­cal, which has changed the im­age of the PSC and the Po­lice Ser­vice ex­ec­u­tive.

Prof Hamid Ghany is a Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.