DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

High Court Judge Ricky Rahim is ex­pect­ed to de­ter­mine a law­suit over the Gov­ern­ment’s move to ex­tend the term of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher by a year be­fore she at­tained re­tire­ment age in May, on No­vem­ber 21. 

Jus­tice Rahim gave the date on Thurs­day as he set dead­lines for fil­ing sub­mis­sions in the mat­ter dur­ing a case man­age­ment con­fer­ence with at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing so­cial and po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj, the Cab­i­net, and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. 

In his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Ma­haraj’s lawyers point­ed out that days be­fore Hare­wood-Christo­pher turned 60 on May 15, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds an­nounced that the Cab­i­net had agreed to ex­tend her term by a year un­der Sec­tion 75 of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act. 

The leg­is­la­tion em­pow­ers the Pres­i­dent to ex­tend the term of a first di­vi­sion of­fi­cer, who is due to re­tire, and the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to ex­tend the term of sec­ond di­vi­sion of­fi­cers un­der her com­mand. 

Po­lice of­fi­cers can re­ceive three con­sec­u­tive one-year ex­ten­sions un­der the pro­vi­sion. 

Ma­haraj’s le­gal team is con­tend­ing that the pro­vi­sion is in­con­sis­tent with Sec­tion 123 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which gives the PSC the pow­er to rec­om­mend the ap­point­ment or re­moval of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice (DCPs) to be ap­proved by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. 

His lawyers point­ed out that the con­sti­tu­tion­al process sought to en­sure that there was no po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence. 

“The Ex­ec­u­tive is not giv­en any op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­fere in the ap­point­ment of the CoP and this en­sures that the can­di­date nom­i­nat­ed by the PSC would be one who would in­de­pen­dent­ly and fair­ly dis­charge the wide pow­ers of the of­fice and not be be­hold­en to the Ex­ec­u­tive,” they said. 

They sug­gest­ed that the ac­tion tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment un­der­mined pub­lic con­fi­dence in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS). 

Ma­haraj’s lawyers al­so took aim at Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s per­for­mance since be­ing ap­point­ed as they ques­tioned her ra­tio­nale for the ex­ten­sion. 

Re­fer­ring to news­pa­per re­ports in which Hare­wood-Christo­pher rat­ed her first 100 days in of­fice as “ex­cel­lent”, Ma­haraj’s lawyers said: “Such ridicu­lous self-praise at a time when the coun­try is drown­ing in blood, mur­der, and may­hem when the con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tee of the right to life, lib­er­ty and the en­joy­ment of one’s prop­er­ty has been com­pro­mised, leaves the pub­lic and the Claimant to won­der about the fac­tors that were tak­en in­to ac­count by the Gov­ern­ment to jus­ti­fy the ex­ten­sion to Mrs Christo­pher’s years of ser­vice in the pub­lic in­ter­est and makes the is­sue of the le­gal­i­ty of her ap­point­ment of fun­da­men­tal pub­lic im­por­tance and ur­gency.” 

Through the law­suit, Ma­haraj is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over the le­gal­i­ty of the ex­ten­sion as well as an or­der quash­ing it. 

Young comes to

Er­la’s de­fence

In re­sponse to the case, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the Cab­i­net are re­ly­ing on an af­fi­davit from Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion Corey Har­ri­son, who serves as sec­re­tary for the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC). 

In the doc­u­ment, Har­ri­son claimed that the PSC was aware of Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s age and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of her re­ceiv­ing an ex­ten­sion. He al­so point­ed out that sim­i­lar ex­ten­sions were af­ford­ed to for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­ers James Philbert and Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob. 

They are al­so re­ly­ing on an af­fi­davit from En­er­gy Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

Young de­nied Ma­haraj’s claim that Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s term has been an “abysmal fail­ure” as he point­ed to sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed by the TTPS Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) Branch to but­tress his claim that there was no dip in the po­lice ser­vice’s de­tec­tion rate un­der her brief tenure. 

Young not­ed that if she had not been grant­ed the ex­ten­sion, Hare­wood-Christo­pher would have on­ly been in the post for three and a half months be­fore she would have had to re­tire. 

“Giv­en the cur­rent chal­lenges fac­ing the TTPS in the in­crease in crime, and more par­tic­u­lar­ly vi­o­lent crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly vi­o­lent crime, es­pe­cial­ly those in­volv­ing the use of il­le­gal firearms, it is im­per­a­tive that the TTPS has an ex­pe­ri­enced and sta­ble ex­ec­u­tive team to chart and lead the way for­ward,” Young said. 

He al­so re­peat­ed­ly de­nied that Hare­wood-Christo­pher was be­hold­en to the Gov­ern­ment due to the ex­ten­sion.

“Ms Hare­wood-Christo­pher does not ‘sing for her sup­per,’” he said. 

Ma­haraj is rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Kent Sam­lal, Robert Ab­dool-Mitchell, Natasha Bis­ram and Vishaal Siewsaran. 

The Cab­i­net is rep­re­sent­ed by Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, and Adana Hosang. Rishi Dass, SC, Vanes­sa Gopaul and Michelle Ben­jamin are rep­re­sent­ing the AG’s Of­fice.