Brent Zephyrine

Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards says while he is un­able to com­ment on the is­sue sur­round­ing the re­vo­ca­tion of Nizam Mo­hammed's ap­point­ment as the chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC), a state­ment may be ex­pect­ed from his of­fice "in due course" and he an­tic­i­pates that no­ti­fi­ca­tion will be sent to the Par­lia­ment for the ap­point­ment of a new chair­man with­in the next two weeks.The Pres­i­dent was speak­ing with re­porters yes­ter­day at the launch of the of­fi­cial Web site of the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent at Knowsley, Queen's Park West, Port-of-Spain..Pressed by re­porters to re­spond to Mo­hammed's ter­mi­na­tion of ap­point­ment, Richards said it was not ap­pro­pri­ate for him to dis­cuss the mat­ter at that junc­ture and that a re­sponse to pub­lic con­cerns and ques­tions over his de­ci­sion may fol­low if and when it be­came nec­es­sary.He said of the is­sue: "I don't think we are tak­ing in­ter­views on this stage at the present time, I'm very sor­ry... not on this is­sue. Maybe we would, in due course, say some­thing else."

On Mon­day, the Pres­i­dent, in ex­er­cis­ing the pow­er vest­ed in him un­der Sec­tion 122A (1) (d) and (f) of the Con­sti­tu­tion (as amend­ed), re­voked Mo­hammed's ap­point­ment as chair­man and mem­ber of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.The re­vo­ca­tion came ten days af­ter Mo­hammed, at a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee sit­ting in Par­lia­ment, cit­ed an eth­nic im­bal­ance with­in the up­per ech­e­lons of the Po­lice Ser­vice which saw African of­fi­cers out­num­ber their East In­di­an coun­ter­parts.The cit­ed par­tic­u­lars of Sec­tion 122A of the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Act 2006 state: "The Pres­i­dent shall, af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter and Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, ter­mi­nate the ap­point­ment of a mem­ber of the PSC, if the mem­ber (d) fails to per­form his du­ties in a re­spon­si­ble or time­ly man­ner;" and, "(f) demon­strates a lack of com­pe­tence to per­form his du­ties."

Asked whether he re­ceived any word on a re­place­ment to Mo­hammed, Richards said there was a pro­ce­dure which need­ed to take place be­fore he was al­lowed to ex­er­cise any dis­cre­tionary pow­ers in re­gards to mak­ing an of­fi­cial ap­point­ment.He added: "There is a pro­ce­dure for his (Mo­hammed) re­place­ment which in­volves, first of all, the Pres­i­dent, con­sult­ing with the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion and the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, and on the ba­sis of this, he will take a no­ti­fi­ca­tion to the Par­lia­ment which will pre­sum­ably, in its af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion, ap­point a mem­ber."It is on­ly when that hap­pens, can the Pres­i­dent ap­point a new chair­man in his own dis­cre­tion," Richards said.

He was re­fer­ring to Sec­tion 122 and sub-sec­tions (1) - (6) of the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Act 2006, which stat­ed that "a chair­man and four oth­er mem­bers", in­clu­sive of the re­main­ing com­mis­sion­ers-Jacque­line Cheesman, Mar­tin George, Ad­di­son Khan and Ken­neth Park­er-"shall be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent in ac­cor­dance with the sec­tion."The Pres­i­dent added while he could not dic­tate the process­es of Par­lia­ment, he an­tic­i­pat­ed a new chair­man of the PSC would be ap­point­ed soon.He said: "I have no way of speed­ing up the Par­lia­ment in its ac­tiv­i­ties."I have al­ready ini­ti­at­ed the process of con­sul­ta­tions and I hope we can come to a con­clu­sion in terms of a no­ti­fi­ca­tion with­in the next week or two."