Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day shrugged off any sug­ges­tion that there would be neg­a­tive fall­out from his ad­mis­sion that he was the “high-rank­ing” Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial who met with for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad on the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice mer­it list last Au­gust.

How­ev­er, he has de­nied in­ter­fer­ing in the PolSC’s process to se­lect a CoP.

Yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter was re­port­ed to have ad­mit­ted that he met with Seep­er­sad last year in or­der to give her in­for­ma­tion that even­tu­al­ly led to her re­scind­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice mer­it list af­ter hand­ing it over Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes.

How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Row­ley shrugged off the sug­ges­tion that this was news.

“Did you not hear me say that I am the on­ly per­son from the Cab­i­net who, to my knowl­edge, meet at Pres­i­dent House?” he asked.

On Au­gust 12, Seep­er­sad had al­ready pro­vid­ed the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice mer­it list to Pres­i­dent Weekes when, ac­cord­ing to re­ports at that time, she (Seep­er­sad) sub­se­quent­ly pulled it back af­ter meet­ing with a “high-rank­ing” Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial.

Yes­ter­day, while ad­mit­ting he met with Seep­er­sad, Row­ley de­nied he in­ter­fered in the CoP se­lec­tion process.

“Since when is ‘pro­vid­ing per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion’ to a Ser­vice Com­mis­sion in­ter­fer­ence?” he asked in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia.

“So I don’t know what this mys­tery ‘high-rank­ing of­fi­cial’ was all about,” the Prime Min­is­ter added.

“I al­so said that if I ever have any in­for­ma­tion per­ti­nent to the busi­ness of any com­mis­sion, then I will not hes­i­tate to make that in­for­ma­tion avail­able to the rel­e­vant com­mis­sion.”

Row­ley in­sist­ed he would al­so nev­er in­ter­fere with an in­de­pen­dent body.

“I have nev­er and will nev­er tell them what to do but they cer­tain­ly must have the in­for­ma­tion that is per­ti­nent to their func­tions,” he said.

“That is my un­der­stand­ing of ‘in­de­pen­dent com­mis­sion’ and I have the sup­port of the Privy Coun­cil in my in­ter­pre­ta­tion.”

This is­sue had dom­i­nat­ed the me­dia and the pub­lic sphere for months af­ter an in­ter­nal let­ter from one for­mer PolSC mem­ber, at­tor­ney Roger Kawals­ingh, was leaked and re­ferred to the pri­vate meet­ing with an un­named high-rank­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial.

In that let­ter, Kawals­ingh al­so ac­cused Seep­er­sad of act­ing uni­lat­er­al­ly re­gard­ing Grif­fith. By the end of Sep­tem­ber, the en­tire PolSC had quit and there had been many calls for the Prime Min­is­ter and the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent to clear the air on who met with Seep­er­sad.

While the Prime Min­is­ter re­mained vague about who met with Seep­er­sad, he did say that he “car­ried out his du­ty” with re­gards to the Grif­fith ap­point­ment.

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