Renu­ka Singh

Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes has nom­i­nat­ed an­oth­er two peo­ple to staff the still de­funct Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent pre­sent­ed Max­ine King, head of Wealth Man­age­ment, First­line Se­cu­ri­ties Lim­it­ed, as a third nom­i­nee for ap­point­ment to the PSC.

The Pres­i­dent al­so pre­sent­ed a nom­i­na­tion for Ian Kevin Ramd­hanie, aca­d­e­m­ic head of the Caribbean In­sti­tute for Se­cu­ri­ty and Pub­lic Safe­ty, as the fourth nom­i­nee for ap­point­ment to the PSC.

The Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent not­ed that on­ly Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­spond­ed to the no­ti­fi­ca­tion of the names, de­spite the fact that both Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar were no­ti­fied.

Last week, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent pre­sent­ed Max­ine At­tong and re­tired Jus­tice of Ap­peal Ju­dith Jones, with sim­i­lar re­sults, as on­ly the Prime Min­is­ter re­spond­ed.

Ian Ramdhanie

At that time, there was no re­sponse from Per­sad-Bisses­sar to those nom­i­na­tions, but she did con­test the name of at­tor­ney Ernest Koy­lass, which was not nom­i­nat­ed by the Pres­i­dent but was sub­mit­ted for vet­ting to the Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion leader.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said then that Koy­lass had known ties to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

On Thurs­day, when asked about her lack of re­sponse to the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent on At­tong and Jones, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was giv­en just two days to vet the names and re­ply to the Pres­i­dent.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has since said that the Pres­i­dent has no moral au­thor­i­ty to nom­i­nate new names for the PSC un­til she clears the air on the al­leged meet­ing be­tween a Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial and for­mer PSC chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent on Au­gust 12, an act she claims sub­se­quent­ly trig­gered the with­draw­al of the mer­it list of per­sons se­lect­ed for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has since put for­ward a mo­tion to re­move the Pres­i­dent. That de­bate is set for to­day.

On Oc­to­ber 18, Per­sad-Bisses­sar wrote to the Pres­i­dent call­ing for the process of staffing the PSC to be “paused” un­til this mo­tion is set­tled, as she (Pres­i­dent) has lost moral and eth­i­cal grounds to con­tin­ue the process.