KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Op­po­si­tion is call­ing on Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo to de­mand an­swers from the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) over its fail­ure to rec­om­mend an act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) while Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro was out of the coun­try.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les ac­cused the PolSC of re­main­ing silent on the is­sue for weeks and ques­tioned why the law was not fol­lowed in ap­point­ing an act­ing CoP.

Gon­za­les said the Op­po­si­tion was ask­ing the Pres­i­dent to call on the PolSC chair­man to ex­plain why pro­to­col was not fol­lowed.

“We are ask­ing the Pres­i­dent, Her Ex­cel­len­cy of Trinidad and To­ba­go, to call up­on the Chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to ex­plain to the coun­try as to why the Con­sti­tu­tion was not com­plied with dur­ing the ab­sence of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er be­cause their si­lence on this very im­por­tant mat­ter, in ad­di­tion to the ex­pla­na­tion giv­en by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, tells you that all is not right,” Gon­za­les said.

He said the con­cern was not that Gue­var­ro left the ju­ris­dic­tion, but that no one was for­mal­ly ap­point­ed to act in his po­si­tion.He said Sec­tion 123 of the Con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides for an act­ing CoP to be ap­point­ed dur­ing the ab­sence of the sub­stan­tive of­fice­hold­er.

Gon­za­les al­so re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that Par­lia­ment be­ing on re­cess pre­vent­ed such an ap­point­ment, not­ing that Par­lia­ment can be re­con­vened when nec­es­sary.

Guardian Me­dia pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed that Gue­var­ro said in­tel­li­gence re­ceived from the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) and Spe­cial Branch prompt­ed his de­par­ture from the coun­try. He al­so said he ap­plied for emer­gency leave.

Gon­za­les yes­ter­day ar­gued that those ex­pla­na­tions raise fur­ther ques­tions. He said if Gue­var­ro left the coun­try as part of his of­fi­cial du­ties, it was un­clear why he would have need­ed emer­gency leave.

“That is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter and the Op­po­si­tion is ask­ing ques­tions of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to clear the air whether you left the ju­ris­dic­tion for per­son­al rea­sons or as part of your pub­lic func­tion as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice,” Gon­za­les said.

While le­gal no­tices ap­pear to list Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin as act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er while Gue­var­ro was out the coun­try, Gon­za­les said there was no record of him be­ing for­mal­ly ap­point­ed. He pro­duced two le­gal no­tices dat­ed Au­gust 18 which were signed by Ben­jamin as act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

He ques­tioned whether Ben­jamin had the le­gal au­thor­i­ty to sign Le­gal No­tices 648 and 649 in the ab­sence of a for­mal ap­point­ment as act­ing com­mis­sion­er.

Gon­za­les claimed the no­tices could be in­valid if Ben­jamin did not pos­sess the le­gal au­thor­i­ty of the Of­fice of the CoP at the time they were signed.

He is now call­ing on Gue­var­ro to clar­i­fy whether the no­tices are valid.