Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes must act in ac­cor­dance with the law and send the mer­it list of nom­i­nees for the po­si­tion of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) to Par­lia­ment for de­bate.

That is the view of for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) chair­man Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran who said if, as re­port­ed, the pre­vi­ous PSC prop­er­ly sent its mer­it list of nom­i­nees for CoP to the Pres­i­dent, the next pre­scribed step is for the Pres­i­dent to send the list to Par­lia­ment for de­bate.

“How­ev­er, while an ap­pli­cant, Mr Anand Rame­sar, has filed for ju­di­cial re­view over the PSC’s de­ci­sion to leave him out of the sub­mit­ted mer­it list, a de­ci­sion is soon to be made on that. We wait and see,” he said.

De­osaran said he blames the po­lit­i­cal au­thor­i­ties for what hap­pened.

“What­ev­er mis­takes the PSC chair­man and the mem­bers have re­cent­ly made, some blame must al­so be put up­on the ad­min­is­tra­tive and leg­isla­tive frame­work in which they are oblig­ed to func­tion,” he said.

“While we might blame the PSC mem­bers in one way or an­oth­er, there is al­so the re­lat­ed mat­ter of po­lit­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, that is the ap­par­ent un­will­ing­ness to re­form the PSC. At some time, too, the for­mer PSC chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad should ex­plain the cir­cum­stances that led to her res­ig­na­tion so as to help en­er­gise the re­forms re­quired.”

De­osaran said he feels some sym­pa­thy for the Pres­i­dent in her “des­per­ate search” for right and will­ing per­sons to serve as PSC com­mis­sion­ers: “I am not sure how many such in­de­pen­dent pro­fes­sion­als will be will­ing to have their back­ground and char­ac­ter, as good as it may be, ex­posed for po­lit­i­cal de­bate in par­lia­ment.”

When asked to com­ment on the mat­ter po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Hamid Ghany point­ed out: “Sec­tion 4 of the Le­gal No­tice 183 of 2021 was ex­punged and read as fol­lows: Where ei­ther the post of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is va­cant or is about to be­come va­cant, the Com­mis­sion may sub­mit to the Pres­i­dent a list of suit­ably qual­i­fied per­sons from amongst the ranks of the Po­lice Ser­vice, in­clud­ing those on con­tract or pre­vi­ous­ly on con­tract, as nom­i­nees to act in the of­fices of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, pend­ing the con­clu­sion of the pro­ce­dure pre­scribed in para­graph 3.”

He de­scribed Kan­ga­loo’s mod­i­fi­ca­tion of her rul­ing a few hours af­ter de­liv­er­ing her oral judge­ment as “ju­di­cial slop­pi­ness.”

“In a very high-pro­file case with the en­tire so­ci­ety look­ing on the judge got her own or­der so ed­i­to­ri­al­ly wrong. Hope­ful­ly, there was no po­lit­i­cal pres­sure to change the or­der. We moved in a few hours from the en­tire Le­gal No­tice 183 of 2021 be­ing un­con­sti­tu­tion­al and void to on­ly para­graph 4 of the Le­gal No­tice 183 of 2021 be­ing ‘su­per­flu­ous and here­by struck out’.”

How­ev­er, Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan de­fend­ed the chain of events last Thurs­day and main­tained that there was no “le­gal slop­pi­ness.”

“I think they were un­der pres­sure and in or­der to give the judge­ment, the judge made a slip and lawyers wrote to her. The judge right­ful­ly cor­rect­ed the judge­ment,” he said.

Khan said once the PSC is ful­ly con­sti­tut­ed the next move is for the Pres­i­dent to con­sult with the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion and the Prime Min­is­ter and make the ap­point­ment of the next CoP.

“When the Pres­i­dent makes her state­ment we will know if she re­ceived the list. If she re­al­ly did re­ceive the list and there was po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence this is a dam­ag­ing blow to the in­de­pen­dence of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent.”

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ment on the is­sue.