The next step in the process to find a new Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice be­gan on Wednes­day evening when the Gov­ern­ment Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment vot­ed to ac­cept Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes’ picks to the new Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

The five new mem­bers are re­tired Ap­pel­late Judge Ju­dith Jones, lead­er­ship/man­age­ment con­sul­tant Max­ine At­tong, char­tered ac­coun­tant Max­ine King, crim­i­nol­o­gist and pub­lic safe­ty ex­pert Ian Ramd­hanie and at­tor­ney Ra­jiv Per­sad.

At this point, based on what Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said of the can­di­dates dur­ing the de­bate, we feel com­fort­able con­clud­ing that the can­di­dates are not on­ly com­pe­tent but go­ing in an in­ten­tion to ful­fil their man­dates with­out fear or favour.

Based on the team’s com­po­si­tion, it seems a sure bet that re­tired Jus­tice Jones will be se­lect­ed as the new head, due to her le­gal back­ground and, equal­ly crit­i­cal, her knowl­edge of how so­ci­ety func­tions and its ex­pec­ta­tions of per­sons in such of­fice. Giv­en what the PSC is al­so like­ly to face, es­pe­cial­ly from the Op­po­si­tion, hav­ing telegraphed from the tone of their de­bate that they will not sup­port this team, Jus­tice Jones may well be just what the doc­tor or­dered for the task ahead.

UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal has al­ready im­plied that one new PSC mem­ber is linked to a project in To­ba­go in­volv­ing one se­nior Gov­ern­ment mem­ber, that King is too close to the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and that Ramd­hanie may have in­ter­faced with some PSC mem­bers on an undis­closed mat­ter.

These is­sues raised may well be red her­rings or hold ab­solute­ly no wa­ter as far as the fu­ture op­er­a­tion of the new PSC is con­cerned. How­ev­er, it may well serve the mem­bers so named dur­ing the de­bate to ad­dress these is­sues head-on pub­licly ahead of of­fi­cial­ly start­ing their tenure. This will go a long way to­wards re­mov­ing some of the pub­lic dis­trust cre­at­ed by the im­broglio sur­round­ing the pre­vi­ous PSC.

Of course, the biggest is­sue the body will face is the process sur­round­ing the CoP mer­it list, giv­en that the pre­vi­ous body had with­drawn it af­ter sub­mit­ting it to the Pres­i­dent. A fresh process may well open up the PSC to lit­i­ga­tion from those who would have reached the last phase of that process. But so too would the use of the ex­ist­ing list, since from what the Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed, an is­sue was raised which may have in­flu­enced the de­ci­sion to with­draw that list and that is­sue could not have been mi­nor if it prompt­ed a re­sponse that led to then-chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad with­draw­ing it.

Ei­ther way, we would not like to be in the po­si­tion the new body will find it­self as it seeks to sort out the mess cre­at­ed by its pre­de­ces­sors. Still, we are cer­tain Jus­tice Jones will be able to give the guid­ance need­ed to en­sure what­ev­er process used is a fair and eq­ui­table one and that the new PSC nav­i­gates the chop­py wa­ters it will face ear­ly on in its tenure. Based on what is cur­rent­ly tran­spir­ing on the crime front na­tion­wide, we al­so hope the new PS will be giv­en the sup­port it needs to com­plete the process so that a new head to steer the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice for­ward can be found in the short­est pos­si­ble time.