Gail Alexan­der

The State of Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions can be amend­ed by Cab­i­net to have it un­der the name of the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in­stead of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, if that is at all nec­es­sary.

This was ex­plained by a Gov­ern­ment spokesper­son last night af­ter Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal claimed an­oth­er cri­sis was emerg­ing since the cur­few and State of Emer­gency (SoE) was un­der the CoP’s “hand.” He then cit­ed re­ports that there may not be a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) af­ter Oc­to­ber 15.

Mooni­lal made the com­ment dur­ing the UNC's Mon­day Night Fo­rum.

There is a cur­rent court mat­ter where an in­ter­pre­ta­tion has been sought on the act­ing ap­point­ment of act­ing CoP Gary Grif­fith. The rul­ing is this mat­ter is due on Thurs­day (Oc­to­ber 14).

Com­ment­ing on Mooni­lal’s claim, how­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment spokesman said the SoE/cur­few reg­u­la­tions are on­ly un­der the CoP’s hand as a re­sult of Gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions and if there was any change to the of­fice of CoP, the reg­u­la­tions on­ly need­ed to be amend­ed.

They said this does not need to go to Par­lia­ment since an up­dat­ed set of reg­u­la­tions can be done by Cab­i­net.