KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s fi­as­co in ap­point­ing a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) con­tin­ues, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal yes­ter­day claimed in­ter­fer­ence in the mat­ter by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds is wreck­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion.
Af­ter a T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) me­dia con­fer­ence at the Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain was can­celled yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal said he got wind that it was can­celled be­cause Hinds in­di­cat­ed that he would have to give per­mis­sion for Gary Grif­fith and ad­dress the brief­ing. He said if that is true, it sug­gest­ed the wreck­ing of the Con­sti­tu­tion as the min­is­ter can­not di­rect the Com­mis­sion or the Po­lice Com­mis­sion on whether they can host a press con­fer­ence.

Mooni­lal made a pub­lic call for act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob to say whether he de­ferred the press con­fer­ence be­cause he was await­ing di­rec­tion from Hinds.
“If it is that an act­ing Com­mis­sion­er needs the au­thor­i­ty of the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to in­di­cate what he has to tell the pub­lic, then that per­son is gullible to oth­er in­flu­ences from politi­cians. Not on­ly if to have a me­dia con­fer­ence, but what to say to the pub­lic. Even­tu­al­ly, what mat­ter to in­ves­ti­gate and what mat­ter not to in­ves­ti­gate, There are se­ri­ous ram­i­fi­ca­tions of this mat­ter,”
he said.

Mooni­lal felt the me­dia con­fer­ence should have tak­en place as planned as it would have shown sol­i­dar­i­ty, uni­ty and cer­tain­ty among the hi­er­ar­chy of the TTPS, which is crit­i­cal at this time. 
He en­dorsed the call by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that “heads must roll” as peo­ple must be held ac­count­able.

On Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the gov­ern­ment con­ced­ed that an er­ror was made in the process of se­lect­ing some­one to head to TTPS. Row­ley said the gov­ern­ment would not ham­mer home a po­si­tion based on a premise that the wrong process is the right process.
How­ev­er, Mooni­lal said Row­ley sought to es­cape the mat­ter by claim­ing it was an in­sti­tu­tion­al fail­ure when it was a fail­ure of Row­ley and his Cab­i­net. He wants Row­ley, Hinds and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young to tell the coun­try whether they in­ter­fered and un­der­mined the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­mit of the Com­mis­sion by di­rect­ing chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad to not sub­mit a list of can­di­dates for Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes.

Mooni­lal said it ap­peared the Com­mis­sion fol­lowed Hinds di­rec­tions by sus­pend­ing Grif­fith. 
“Min­is­ter Hinds has shown this ten­den­cy through­out this mat­ter to in­ter­vene, to use po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence, and we are ask­ing what oth­er mat­ters would they want to in­flu­ence the po­lice on, and that is the se­ri­ous mat­ter.” 
He said more in­for­ma­tion will come out in the next few days. He claimed Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley was seek­ing to dis­tract from the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny’s $500 mil­lion loss, Petrotrin’s set­tle­ment with A&V Oil and Gas Ltd, and im­ple­men­ta­tion of COVID-19 safe zones, which he said was a ploy to force vac­ci­na­tions on the coun­try.
When the Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed Hinds for a re­sponse to Mooni­lal claims he said he was in the mid­dle of his prayers and asked that we call lat­er. How­ev­er, the min­is­ter did not re­spond to sub­se­quent calls.