An­na-Lisa Paul

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has chal­lenged Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes to come clean about the role her of­fice played in the cur­rent im­broglio in­volv­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) and for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

Speak­ing dur­ing UNC’s week­ly vir­tu­al me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al said, “The Pres­i­dent, now more than ever, must ac­count to the peo­ple. Si­lence is sim­ply not an op­tion.”

Call­ing for clar­i­ty in light of Row­ley’s ad­mis­sion on Sat­ur­day that he had been com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the com­mis­sion dur­ing the past year, dur­ing which time he ex­pressed a vote of no con­fi­dence in Grif­fith as com­mis­sion­er– Lutch­me­di­al said for Weekes to re­main silent on such crit­i­cal is­sues, it could be in­ter­pret­ed that, “The Pres­i­dent is bring­ing the of­fice she holds in­to dis­re­pute by ap­pear­ing to be par­ti­san.”

In­di­cat­ing the UNC was not lev­el­ing such an al­le­ga­tion, Lutch­me­di­al said in law, jus­tice must not on­ly be done but must be seen to be done.

She added, “You must not on­ly be non-par­ti­san but you must ap­pear that way to the pub­lic. The pub­lic must have that con­fi­dence that the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter sits above the pol­i­tics and has no fear or favour in how they ex­er­cise their func­tions and du­ties.”

Claim­ing sim­i­lar calls for ac­count­abil­i­ty had em­anat­ed from oth­er quar­ters and could not be ig­nored, Lutch­me­di­al said, “The pub­lic has lost con­fi­dence in the PSC, in their in­de­pen­dence.”

De­scrib­ing as trou­bling that for the first time in T&T’s his­to­ry that it was with­out a po­lice com­mis­sion­er or an act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er, and there was no com­mis­sion to ap­point a com­mis­sion­er­—she went on, “The au­thors of this de­ba­cle must be held to ac­count.”

Not­ing the pub­lished state­ment in the dai­ly news­pa­per by the Pres­i­dent yes­ter­day, Lutch­me­di­al said the coun­try has many unan­swered ques­tions.

Adding that the UNC would not al­low the rant­i­ngs of a mad man to stop them from ful­fill­ing its man­date to de­liv­er the coun­try from the dic­ta­to­r­i­al clutch­es of Row­ley, she said, “Our coun­try is falling apart, lit­er­al­ly. Roads and bridges are falling apart but our in­sti­tu­tions are al­so crum­bling.”

As a for­mer crim­i­nal at­tor­ney, Lutch­me­di­al said Row­ley, along with oth­ers had now been caught out in their lies and had no oth­er op­tion but to, “rant and rave and cre­ate as many dis­trac­tions, di­ver­sions and ex­cus­es as pos­si­ble, be­cause they can no longer de­ny the role they played in a very dis­turb­ing saga.”

Out­lin­ing the chronol­o­gy of events, Lutch­me­di­al said in 2020 —the then CoP Grif­fith, “had stood up to the PM and right­ly so I be­lieve, to tell him that his in­ter­pre­ta­tion of po­lice pow­ers un­der the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions was wrong, that the TTPS could not en­tre pri­vate prop­er­ty and so on.”

She added, “You would re­call that Mr Grif­fith was sum­moned to a meet­ing short­ly there­after, and he then apol­o­gised. Now in­ter­est­ing­ly, the Gov­ern­ment end­ed up hav­ing to de­clare a State of Emer­gency for the same rea­son that com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith high­light­ed, so that alone tells you he was right.”

“I shud­der to think that as a PM some­one would be so pet­ty, but it would ap­pear that if Row­ley says jump and you don’t ask “how high” that he will lose con­fi­dence in you. Per­haps Row­ley lost con­fi­dence in his abil­i­ty to con­trol the CoP. Per­haps he re­alised then that he could not get the CoP to fol­low his com­mands and this did not sit well with him, so he em­barked on what would ap­pear to be a cam­paign against the CoP and so he start­ed in­ter­fac­ing with the PolSC.”

Lutch­me­di­al said Row­ley, “as­ton­ish­ing­ly says that there is an el­e­ment of in­ter­ac­tion built in­to the in­de­pen­dence of our in­sti­tu­tions. This is how he jus­ti­fies an at­tempt to in­flu­ence the PolSC in the ex­er­cise of their func­tions un­der the con­sti­tu­tion. He fur­ther states that he does not have to pass through the pres­i­dent to get the Com­mis­sion to do any­thing. He can do it him­self. He is so bold­faced, that he is boast­ing that he can and will and al­ready has utilised his of­fice to feed in­for­ma­tion to what ought to be in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions.”

De­clar­ing this to be “hog­wash,” she added, “This is how you are jus­ti­fy­ing an at­tempt to in­flu­ence the PolSC in the ex­er­cise of their func­tions un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

She al­so ques­tioned if the PSC had ever been in­formed of the fact-find­ing mis­sion that Row­ley’s two hand-picked re­tirees had been sent on, and if the con­tents of that ex­er­cise had been shared with the en­tire com­mis­sion or on­ly with for­mer chair­man of the com­mis­sion Bliss Seep­er­sad.

Claim­ing Seep­er­sad had been a po­lit­i­cal ap­pointee who had been serv­ing on an­oth­er State board when she was se­lect­ed to head the in­de­pen­dent PSC, Lutch­me­di­al re­mind­ed the na­tion that the UNC had voiced ob­jec­tions when Seep­er­sad’s rec­om­men­da­tion was ini­tial­ly brought up.

“The coun­try is now wit­ness­ing the af­ter­math of that very poor de­ci­sion,” she said.

“This sto­ry which the PM has so help­ful­ly ex­posed for him­self, jus­ti­fies all of the con­cerns raised by the Op­po­si­tion in the past few weeks. There was clear­ly a con­cert­ed ef­fort on the part of politi­cians to in­flu­ence the de­ci­sions of the ser­vice com­mis­sion.”

In re­in­forc­ing the call for Weekes to speak out, Lutch­me­di­al ar­gued, “The Pres­i­dent ap­point­ed the PSC. If the PSC had in­for­ma­tion passed to them or to the chair­man by a politi­cian who was com­plain­ing about the CoP, the Pres­i­dent had a du­ty to ad­vise them about the prop­er man­ner to pro­ceed.”

Re­gard­ing Seep­er­sad, she said, “Bliss Seep­er­sad can­not and will not be al­lowed to sim­ply slip out of this melee with­out be­ing held ac­count­able for her very ques­tion­able con­duct.”

“The PolSC chair­man must say whether she shared her in­for­ma­tion from Row­ley with the oth­er mem­bers—Roger Kawals­ingh’s let­ter to the Pres­i­dent sug­gest­ed that they were left in the dark.”

Seep­er­sad, ac­cord­ing to Kawals­ingh went to re­tired Jus­tice Stan­ley John and spoke with him with­out their knowl­edge.

In­di­cat­ing that Seep­er­sad had al­so made a uni­lat­er­al de­ci­sion to sus­pend Grif­fith from the act­ing ap­point­ment, with­out con­sul­ta­tion, Lutch­me­di­al said, “It rais­es very se­ri­ous ques­tions about who was ad­vis­ing or in­struct­ing her.”

In a full-page ad­ver­tise­ment yes­ter­day, Weekes as­sured, “I as­sure the na­tion that nei­ther the OTP nor I par­tic­i­pat­ed in, al­lowed, or en­cour­aged any at­tempt­ed or ac­tu­al im­prop­er in­ter­fer­ence, in­flu­ence or breach of the prin­ci­ple of sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers in the op­er­a­tion of the PolSC in the mat­ter of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. I did not re­ceive in­struc­tions or sug­ges­tions from any in­di­vid­ual, nor did I give any to the PolSC. I cer­tain­ly did not wil­ful­ly vi­o­late any pro­vi­sion of the Con­sti­tu­tion nor have I be­haved in a way that could lead one rea­son­ably to con­clude that I have brought the OTP in­to ha­tred, ridicule or con­tempt or en­dan­gered the se­cu­ri­ty of the State.”