GAIL ALEXAN­DER

The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion will be on its last leg to­day—lit­er­al­ly.

The sec­ond to last re­main­ing PSC mem­ber, Roger Kawals­ingh, is re­sign­ing af­ter the com­mis­sion col­lapsed last Sat­ur­day with the res­ig­na­tion of a sec­ond mem­ber, Dr Su­san Craig-James.

This was con­firmed by Guardian last Sat­ur­day and again yes­ter­day.

Af­ter Kawals­ingh’s res­ig­na­tion let­ter reach­es the Pres­i­dent this morn­ing, it leaves em­bat­tled PSC chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad alone in the PSC which ef­fec­tive­ly col­lapsed on Sat­ur­day with Craig-James’ res­ig­na­tion, on the heels of Court­ney Mc­Nish’s de­par­ture last Tues­day.

Seep­er­sad yes­ter­day didn’t re­spond to Guardian Me­dia queries on whether she too will re­sign.

Kawals­ingh, Mc­Nish and Craig-James all dis­agreed with Seep­er­sad’s han­dling of is­sues that arose af­ter the PSC be­gan se­lec­tion of a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in June. The over­all is­sue has been mired in a firestorm of prob­lems, in­clud­ing le­gal mat­ters and crit­i­cism, leav­ing the PSC’s cred­i­bil­i­ty shot.

The lat­est is­sue was the PSC re­scind­ing its let­ter for act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith to take ad­min­is­tra­tive leave. Grif­fith re­mains on leave un­til the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which the PSC hired re­tired jus­tice Stan­ley John to con­duct, is com­plet­ed. John is do­ing fact-find­ing on T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is­sues, in­clud­ing on the is­su­ing of firearms users li­cences (FULs).

But the oth­er com­mis­sion­ers’ key con­cern had been ab­sence of le­gal ad­vice to guide them on the de­ci­sion for Grif­fith to be sent on leave and whether PSC had the pow­er to act on this, con­sid­er­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion’s pro­vi­sions and if PSC did, how send­ing him on leave should be done.

Kawals­ingh’s res­ig­na­tion let­ter - two pages and a bit more—de­tails to the Pres­i­dent his rea­sons for re­sign­ing.

Kawals­ingh who’d doc­u­ment­ed his con­cerns on the CoP is­sues to Seep­er­sad in many in­stances, was known to have been very up­set with the sit­u­a­tion. Emails he’d sent to Seep­er­sad demon­strat­ing the con­flict with­in the com­mis­sion were leaked last week.

Once there’s no PSC, ex­perts told Guardian Me­dia that an­oth­er will have to be ap­point­ed and John’s probe may al­so col­lapse.

Ex­act­ly when an all-new PSC ma­te­ri­alis­es is a ques­tion that re­mains unan­swered for now.

Sat­ur­day’s an­nounce­ment from Pres­i­dent’s House of Craig-James’ res­ig­na­tion not­ed the PSC’s lack of quo­rum, adding, “There is a no­ti­fi­ca­tion which is with Par­lia­ment at this time and the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent will make every ef­fort to fill the two re­cent va­can­cies at the soon­est.”

Yes­ter­day, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent al­so re­spond­ed to the UNC’s claim that there was “no no­ti­fi­ca­tion with Par­lia­ment at this time” for a new PSC com­mis­sion­er and “no con­sul­ta­tion had tak­en place with the Op­po­si­tion Leader.”

The Pres­i­dent’s of­fice, stand­ing by its po­si­tion, re­it­er­at­ed that a no­ti­fi­ca­tion is with Par­lia­ment at this time. “Her Ex­cel­len­cy is­sued a no­ti­fi­ca­tion dat­ed June 10, 2020, in re­spect of Mr Vin­cel Ed­wards as a nom­i­nee for Mem­ber of the PSC in com­pli­ance with Sec­tion 122 (4). It was sent to Par­lia­ment by the Sec­re­tary to the Pres­i­dent on the same day, June 10, 2020, for de­bate by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

“More­over, the no­ti­fi­ca­tion was sent to Par­lia­ment on­ly af­ter con­sul­ta­tion, by let­ter of June 5, 2020, with the Prime Min­is­ter and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion as stip­u­lat­ed by the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“It is our un­der­stand­ing that the Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness, hav­ing giv­en a di­rec­tive dur­ing the last sit­ting of Par­lia­ment that the no­ti­fi­ca­tion be placed on the Or­der Pa­per for the next sit­ting, the no­ti­fi­ca­tion is cur­rent­ly with the Clerk of the House for plac­ing on the Or­der Pa­per.”

There had been news­pa­per re­ports of Ed­wards’ nom­i­na­tion in 2020.

Ed­wards is a re­tired deputy CoP and had in­ves­ti­gat­ed the Day of To­tal Polic­ing which shut down T&T in March 2015 dur­ing his tenure. Ed­wards, a white-col­lar crime spe­cial­ist, is the group le­gal and tech­ni­cal ad­vis­er at pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firm Pro-Tec In­tel­li­gence Ser­vice.

On when the no­ti­fi­ca­tion might be de­bat­ed, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials con­firmed yes­ter­day that “at this time,” no House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives sit­ting’s planned to do so.

The next sit­ting’s ex­pect­ed to be Oc­to­ber 4, when the 2022 Bud­get will be pre­sent­ed. That’s fol­lowed by three weeks of de­bate in the Up­per and Low­er Hous­es and Fi­nance Com­mit­tee ex­am­i­na­tions. Nor­mal Par­lia­men­tary busi­ness isn’t done in that pe­ri­od.

They should have re­signed al­ready—Sad­dam

Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad and mem­ber Roger Kawals­ingh should have re­signed since yes­ter­day, UNC MP Sad­dam Ho­sein said yes­ter­day.

De­tail­ing the PSC’s blun­ders in the han­dling of the Gary Grif­fith mat­ter, Ho­sein al­so de­mand­ed the res­ig­na­tion of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi whom he blamed for for­mu­lat­ing Le­gal No­tice 183 on the CoP ap­point­ment. Ho­sein al­so raised queries he in­sist­ed the Pres­i­dent must an­swer.

Ho­sein cit­ed Seep­er­sad’s “high­hand­ed­ness” based on re­ports of the com­mis­sion­ers’ let­ters on her re­fusal to con­form with the ma­jor­i­ty agree­ment of the PSC.

“Bliss blis­tered the process…there’s been a bat­tery of blun­ders. T&T has lost con­fi­dence in PSC if so many blun­ders have been made in CoP se­lec­tion process­es,” Ho­sein said.

Ho­sein said it was al­so a con­flict of in­ter­est for Seep­er­sad to have head­ed PSC when she was on the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty’s board ap­point­ed by Gov­ern­ment.

“She was a po­lit­i­cal ap­pointee en­joy­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s con­fi­dence. But a po­lit­i­cal ap­pointee can’t head an in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tion!”

Ho­sein said Kawals­ingh is al­so an at­tor­ney for Vin­cent Nel­son, who has crim­i­nal charges in court on al­leged le­gal fees paid by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice. H claimed Kawals­ingh re­ceived “mul­ti-mil­lion briefs” from the AG’s of­fice un­der Al-Rawi.

He on­ly broke his si­lence when there was pub­lic out­rage. When T&T is un­der a state of emer­gency and a CoP has far-reach­ing pow­ers, we have two act­ing CoPs and can’t ap­point a Com­mis­sion­er – PSC has de­stroyed all cred­i­bil­i­ty in process­es to ap­point a CoP,” Ho­sein said.