Af­ter the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s or­der on the se­lec­tion of a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er is tabled in Par­lia­ment this morn­ing, the Op­po­si­tion will of­fi­cial­ly re­quest it be de­bat­ed.

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip David Lee yes­ter­day con­firmed they would write the House Speak­er mak­ing the re­quest.

The move comes af­ter Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Mon­day sig­nalled dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the PSC’s or­der which At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said has been sim­pli­fied.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith’s three-year con­tract ends on Au­gust 18. He’s fi­nal­is­ing the de­ci­sion on ap­ply­ing again. There’s no au­to­mat­ic re­new­al.

PSC’s or­der, which be­came ef­fec­tive last Thurs­day (June 17), de­tails the process to se­lect a CoP and deputy. It’s dif­fer­ent to the 2015 process, which Al-Rawi said al­lows the PSC to do its job faster and in a more af­ford­able way.

To­day’s lay­ing of the or­der in the House doesn’t re­quire a de­bate.

It re­mains law un­less a mo­tion to re­ject it is agreed by ei­ther the Up­per or Low­er House with­in 40 days of its pub­li­ca­tion. If that process is re­quired, the de­bate will be need­ed. Ei­ther House has up to Ju­ly 28 to nega­tise the or­der.

If the un­usu­al step of mak­ing it nega­tised is ap­proved in ei­ther House, the or­der ceas­es to be ef­fec­tive from the June 17 date. But any ac­tion tak­en by any au­thor­i­ty pri­or to its re­jec­tion re­mains law­ful and con­tin­ues to have full le­gal ef­fect.

Yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi re­spond­ed to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claims on the is­sue on Mon­day.

“The Op­po­si­tion leader’s rant­i­ngs and rav­ings will go down in his­to­ry as the great­est ef­fort to ‘hold on’. It bor­ders on defama­tion and skirts on slan­der, li­bel and sedi­tion—all con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry non­sense,’’ he added.

“The Con­sti­tu­tion states the PSC is the sole en­ti­ty in this re­gard. PSC sought sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of the or­der af­ter tak­ing two and a half years (on the last se­lec­tion) with firms et cetera. All the or­der says is let the PSC do its job.

“The UNC agreed with changes in 2006 and that was left when she was prime min­is­ter. The UNC didn’t vote for changes in 2015 and they went to court, which amend­ed it by re­mov­ing the min­is­ter’s role. But they al­so didn’t sup­port the vote for the Com­mis­sion­er in 2018—they ab­stained.’’

Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Mon­day dis­missed Al-Rawi’s view that the process was a “sim­pli­fi­ca­tion.”

Ques­tion­ing if there was a “sin­is­ter mo­tive,” she claimed, “Gov­ern­ment’s mov­ing to change the law to be able to in­sert their per­son­al po­lice com­mis­sion­er ... what we’re point­ing out is the mis­chief be­ing cre­at­ed, and I use the word mis­chief as it’s used in law.

“The mis­chief is the po­ten­tial for a rul­ing par­ty/sit­ting gov­ern­ment to se­lect a CoP. And then use that CoP and the po­lice force as a pri­vate army. To ha­rass per­sons or op­po­nents. We’ve heard half the Cab­i­net doesn’t want this one fel­la—who the coun­try wants—and the oth­er wants some­one else.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the process re­moves an in­de­pen­dent se­lec­tion firm to eval­u­ate of­fi­cers best qual­i­fied for the po­si­tion. She queried if the PSC has the ex­per­tise to prop­er­ly eval­u­ate nom­i­nees and if there would be bias, as PSC eval­u­ates the sit­ting Com­mis­sion­er an­nu­al­ly, in­ter­act­ing with him.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, she added, one nom­i­nee’s name at a time would be de­bat­ed by Par­lia­ment, but now the en­tire list will be sent to the Pres­i­dent.

“Is the Gov­ern­ment try­ing to force the PSC to nom­i­nate all per­sons on the mer­it list and pre­vent PSC from nom­i­nat­ing who the com­mis­sion thinks is best suit­ed? Since the or­der al­so re­moves the re­quire­ment that the high­est-ranked can­di­date’s name will be brought for de­bate first, is the Pres­i­dent, now act­ing in ac­cor­dance with Cab­i­net’s ad­vice to sub­mit names to Par­lia­ment?

“Does Gov­ern­ment want to hide the list of re­ject­ed can­di­dates Why hide the list used to choose from? Is it you want to choose some­one who’s not the most qual­i­fied?” she asked.