SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Christo­pher's name has been sub­mit­ted to Par­lia­ment for de­bate for the po­si­tion of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, af­ter the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) de­liv­ered the mer­it list for the po­si­tion to the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent yes­ter­day..

This was al­so con­firmed via the Or­der Pa­per for Fri­day's sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives

Christo­pher's ap­point­ment will be the first or­der of busi­ness on Fri­day.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that mem­bers of the PolSC de­liv­ered the mer­it list, with an ac­com­pa­ny­ing let­ter, to the Pres­i­dent’s of­fice yes­ter­day, just one day short of their Jan­u­ary 31 dead­line.

An of­fi­cial state­ment from the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent stat­ed that the no­ti­fi­ca­tion was de­liv­ered to the Pres­i­dent’s of­fice, signed by out­go­ing Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes and for­ward­ed to the Par­lia­ment.

Once the rec­om­men­da­tion reach­es the Par­lia­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is ex­pect­ed to lead the de­bate on whether the PolSC’s top can­di­date will be ac­cept­ed or re­ject­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Or­der Pa­per for the Feb­ru­ary 3 sit­ting of Par­lia­ment, the first or­der of busi­ness will be the no­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Pres­i­dent in re­spect of the nom­i­na­tion of Christo­pher, the cur­rent act­ing CoP, for ap­point­ment to the of­fice of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Christo­pher, for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and for­mer act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob all ap­plied for the po­si­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 123 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Com­mis­sion shall se­lect the high­est-grad­ed can­di­date on the Or­der of Mer­it List and sub­mit that can­di­date’s name to the Pres­i­dent.

The Con­sti­tu­tion fur­ther states that if the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives does not ap­prove the high­est-grad­ed can­di­date, oth­er nom­i­na­tions in or­der of mer­it may be sub­mit­ted to the House.

“Where the Or­der of Mer­it List is ex­haust­ed, the process set out in this Or­der shall be recom­menced,” the Con­sti­tu­tion states.

The cur­rent PolSC, led by re­tired Jus­tice Ju­dith Jones, was ap­point­ed in No­vem­ber 2021, af­ter the sud­den res­ig­na­tion of all mem­bers of the for­mer Bliss Seep­er­sad-led Com­mis­sion.

Seep­er­sad’s team had sub­mit­ted a mer­it list to Pres­i­dent Weekes but that list was im­me­di­ate­ly with­drawn, leav­ing in its wake ac­cu­sa­tions of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence by Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley.

The with­draw­al of the list came af­ter Row­ley sub­mit­ted a re­port on the op­er­a­tions of the TTPS Firearms Unit to the Com­mis­sion. Af­ter much pub­lic out­cry, Weekes even­tu­al­ly broke her si­lence, deny­ing she had par­tic­i­pat­ed in or en­cour­aged in­ter­fer­ence in the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so de­nied see­ing the mer­it list or giv­ing any in­struc­tion re­lat­ed to it.