The in­evitable oc­curred yes­ter­day with the res­ig­na­tion of an­oth­er Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion mem­ber in Dr Su­san Craig-James. Her de­par­ture, days af­ter Court­ney Mc Nish, left the PolSC with­out a quo­rum and in­op­er­a­ble as on­ly chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad and Roger Kawals­ingh are left.

But even as the PolSC im­plod­ed, the is­sue which sparked it re­mains. In­deed, the coun­try now finds it­self with two act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­ers as Gary Grif­fith tech­ni­cal­ly re­mains on leave while Mc Don­ald Ja­cob holds on un­til the grey ar­eas sur­round­ing Grif­fith’s fu­ture are cleared up. And there­in lies the prob­lem.

Just hours be­fore Dr Craig-James’ res­ig­na­tion, there was more bungling on Seep­er­sad’s part af­ter she arranged a me­dia con­fer­ence at which Grif­fith and Ja­cobs were to ap­pear. In an email that be­came pub­lic, Seep­er­sad in­struct­ed Ja­cobs to fa­cil­i­tate Grif­fith’s pres­ence at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing for the event. Whether by Ja­cob or Grif­fith’s re­fusal to par­tic­i­pate, or some oth­er oc­cur­rence, the event did not come off and that may have been the best out­come.

Truth be told, any such un­der­tak­ing would have been an­oth­er farce on the part of the PolSC and the in­tend­ed par­tic­i­pants. This is be­cause the on­ly body that can ac­count for the un­holy mess in which the coun­try now finds it­self re­gard­ing the ap­point­ment of a new Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is the PolSC.

In par­tic­u­lar, PolSC chair Seep­er­sad must ful­ly ac­count for the de­ba­cle of the past weeks sur­round­ing Grif­fith’s act­ing ap­point­ment, sus­pen­sion, re­scind­ing of that sus­pen­sion and his ap­par­ent agree­ment to now stay on ex­tend­ed leave while the mess is cleaned up. This is be­cause up to this point, the PolSC has not told the pub­lic about Grif­fith’s true sta­tus.

Up to yes­ter­day, on­ly Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had sig­nalled that an er­ror was made with Grif­fith’s act­ing ap­point­ment and based on what the me­dia had gleaned, it ap­pears there is an at­tempt to rec­ti­fy it via a le­gal arrange­ment so that the over­all process may move for­ward.

Of course, an ob­vi­ous ques­tion that aris­es is why the PolSC felt it had to reap­point Grif­fith to act pend­ing the com­ple­tion of the new CoP se­lec­tion process in the first place? Com­mon sense would have sug­gest­ed that DCP Ja­cob, now act­ing in Grif­fith’s ab­sence any­way, should have held on un­til such time as a new CoP was giv­en the nod from the mer­it list of can­di­dates pro­duced by the PolSC.

Then there is what ap­pears to be the in­ter­nal wran­gling with­in the PolSC it­self over Seep­er­sad’s man­age­ment of vary­ing as­pects of this process, which seems to have sparked the cur­rent im­plo­sion as at least two mem­bers, hop­ing to save their in­tegri­ty, de­part­ed. Ac­cu­sa­tions of ex­ter­nal ma­nip­u­la­tion al­so can­not be over­looked or dis­missed.

Ei­ther way, with the PolSC now ren­dered in­op­er­a­ble, it seems the on­ly way out for Ms Seep­er­sad is to hold a me­dia con­fer­ence at which she clears the air on this fi­as­co, then does the ho­n­ourable thing by ten­der­ing her res­ig­na­tion. The PolSC is too im­por­tant an in­sti­tu­tion to be shroud­ed in such con­tro­ver­sy, es­pe­cial­ly where its in­de­pen­dence from ex­ter­nal in­flu­ence is con­cerned. Cer­tain­ly, how­ev­er, with pub­lic con­fi­dence in her com­pe­tence and in­de­pen­dence now com­plete­ly erod­ed, it can­not sim­ply be a mat­ter of Pres­i­dent House ap­point­ing new mem­bers and the PolSC mov­ing on.