Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin

O my, what a quag­mire ex­ists in the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion af­ter the earth­quak­ing com­ments of the chair­man, Nizam Mo­hammed.In the game of foot­ball, if the play­er makes a dan­ger­ous play, he is giv­en a yel­low card. This is a fi­nal warn­ing which the ref­er­ee gives to the play­er. Any fur­ther rough and tum­ble play could lead to a red card and the play­er has no choice but to leave the field and can take no fur­ther part in the game.In some ar­eas, he miss­es the next match, as he seeks for­give­ness. Well, some per­sons have con­clud­ed that Mr Nizam Mo­hammed has worked ex­treme­ly hard to ac­quire a red card.Some would even sug­gest a pur­ple card. Mr Mo­hammed, up to last Fri­day de­clared that he had done noth­ing wrong. A tough state­ment came from the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter which de­scribed the speech of Mo­hammed as reck­less, sense­less and di­vi­sive.

At­tor­ney Dana See­ta­hal opined that he was not fit to lead.As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Fitzroy Fred­er­icks said that the PSC chair­man was "farse and out of place" and was promis­ing to hold a news con­fer­ence to ad­dress the is­sue of Mr Mo­hammed's "atro­cious state­ments." Of course, Mr Mo­hammed claimed that he got this sig­nif­i­cant let­ter from Sgt Rame­sar, Pres­i­dent of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, which con­tained com­ments about the eth­nic com­po­si­tion of the Pro­mo­tion­al Ad­vi­so­ry Board. In fact, Mr Rame­sar called for eth­nic equi­lib­ri­um.So in a sense, Mr Mo­hammed ex­posed the con­tents of the let­ter thus drag­ging Mr Rame­sar in­to this tor­rid de­bate.

Then be­lieve it or not, the Con­gress of the Peo­ple called on the Prime Min­is­ter to re­move Mr Mo­hammed.Now they must know that based on the con­sti­tu­tion, the ho­n­ourable PM can­not re­voke his ap­point­ment.One would ex­pect, based on con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sions, that there would be an enor­mous amount of di­a­logue be­tween the Pres­i­dent, the Prime Min­is­ter and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion be­fore there is any de­ci­sion to re­voke the ap­point­ment of Mr Mo­hammed. But the fact that a ma­jor league play­er in the Cab­i­net has called for his re­moval can­not be triv­i­alised or ig­nored.Many per­sons be­lieved that af­ter the "In­de­pen­dence Square" af­fair, Mr Mo­hammed qual­i­fied for a yel­low or red card.Cit­i­zens were nev­er able to get the truth and the whole truth, but we were told by those who oc­cu­py space in the stratos­phere, that the in­quiry was closed and it was time to move on.

But we may ask, move on and go where?To the next awk­ward sce­nario? Well, Mr Mo­hammed has moved on and away from at least three of his com­mis­sion­ers-Porter, Cheese­man and George.They did not heed the call to ral­ly around Mr Mo­hammed in the In­de­pen­dence Square af­fair, and now, they have dis­tanced them­selves from his com­ments on the eth­nic com­po­si­tion of the Po­lice hi­er­ar­chy.

But there re­mains a burn­ing ques­tion: Did Mr Mo­hammed com­pre­hen­sive­ly ven­ti­late this is­sue in the PSC board­room be­fore he spoke to the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee.Why am I ask­ing this ques­tion?Well these three knights in shin­ing ar­mour looked and sound­ed con­fused.We even heard the chair­man de­clar­ing that the guns are trained on him and he even called on Par­lia­ment to help him "tack­le the prob­lem".

There is no doubt that there is an eth­nic im­bal­ance and it should be ad­dressed.But it must be ad­dressed in a clin­i­cal and pro­fes­sion­al man­ner. There is no room for in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty. There must be a stud­ied and steady ap­proach to solv­ing this prob­lem and this must in­clude a com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis of the his­tor­i­cal an­tecedents. Now, when Mr Mo­hammed speaks about the fear that mem­bers of the pub­lic feel, when they con­tem­plate go­ing to the po­lice of­fi­cers, he sug­gest­ed that this fear could be based on this eth­nic im­bal­ance. I would, how­ev­er, de­clare that a great deal of fear op­er­at­ing in the minds of all races is not about eth­nic im­bal­ance but about in­tegri­ty.

How many times have we heard sto­ries about po­lice of­fi­cers be­tray­ing gen­uine cit­i­zens for a few dol­lars more?But how and why?Well, they sup­ply the in­for­ma­tion to the thugs who give them blood mon­ey.Now we are not talk­ing about all the po­lice, but the mi­nor­i­ty who are mafi­at­i­cal­ly linked. What we have now is a de­bate that is more emo­tion­al than ra­tio­nal and since out of evil "cometh good", there have been a few calls to ad­dress eth­nic im­bal­ance through­out the na­tion.But did Mr Mo­hammed ex­pect the de­bate to be con­duct­ed in such a hos­tile man­ner?Did he ex­pect swift con­dem­na­tion and calls for his re­moval? An is­sue we have to con­tend with is the ug­ly spec­tre of op­por­tunists who have jumped in­to the gayelle ready to do bat­tle.These par­a­sites and pi­ra­nhas just wait for op­por­tu­ni­ties to fu­el the flames of racial an­tag­o­nism and ha­tred.These wolves in pi­ous cloth­ing, must be re­ject­ed.They are not gen­uine.

I agree that there should be di­a­logue, even de­bate, but it must be con­duct­ed in a se­ri­ous, sci­en­tif­ic and sat­is­fac­to­ry man­ner. This is a unique plur­al so­ci­ety and there should be no space af­ford­ed to those who are ir­re­spon­si­ble.Al­ready some my­opic talk-show hosts have en­gaged in dam­ag­ing rhetoric.Con­se­quent­ly, we must ap­proach the eth­nic dis­cus­sion recog­nis­ing that in this cul­ture race, re­li­gion, class and pol­i­tics have the po­ten­tial to pro­duce an ex­plo­sion where no one will win in the long term. A na­tion can­not de­vel­op on the fu­el of in­ap­pro­pri­ate con­duct.There are lessons in this ex­pe­ri­ence for all of us!