To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship has been bat­ting a straight line since com­ing to pow­er, gen­tly tap­ping at each of the ur­gent is­sues com­ing its way with one eye on their cam­paign promis­es and the oth­er fixed on the fail­ings of the gov­ern­ment they re­placed in of­fice. The one that's com­ing their way next is one that the PNM nev­er

sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly ad­dressed, rais­ing their po­lit­i­cal bat each time and

call­ing for a bye in­stead of man­ag­ing the crit­i­cal is­sues at stake in the se­lec­tion of a new Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. For years now, in­stead of some­one placed in a ca­reer defin­ing role, with years be­fore him to prove him­self and ex­e­cute on a re­al plan to man­age the crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try, T&T has in­stead en­joyed ca­reer of­fi­cers in the twi­light of their ser­vice, lit­er­al­ly serv­ing out their last months as po­lice­men in the role.

Most re­cent­ly, James Philbert had the du­bi­ous ho­n­our of hav­ing his re­tire­ment from the role of Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice ex­tend­ed three times while the gov­ern­ment dithered with the busi­ness of se­lect­ing a CoP ca­pa­ble of not just oc­cu­py­ing, but ex­tend­ing the role. The se­lec­tion com­mit­tee of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion has of­fered its mer­it list of can­di­dates for the post of Com­mis­sion­er and three deputy Com­mis­sion­er, and two of the four top rec­om­men­da­tions are Cana­di­ans. The top list­ed nom­i­nee, for­mer Roy­al Cana­di­an Mount­ed Po­lice of­fi­cer Neal Park­er has al­ready sparked rip­ples of dis­sen­sion in the ranks of the Op­po­si­tion and with­in the ranks of the po­lice force.

"I will have to be con­vinced," said Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, "that there is good rea­son why, at this stage of our de­vel­op­ment, we would have to go abroad for a com­mis­sion­er of po­lice." Pres­i­dent of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Em­rol Bruce warned that there would be "some lev­el of re­sis­tance" by its mem­bers to the se­lec­tion of the Cana­di­an Moun­tie and re­port­ed that the Po­lice Re­tirees As­so­ci­a­tion in­tend­ed to ask the Prime Min­is­ter to use her pow­er of ve­to on the ap­point­ment. There are two dis­turb­ing de­vel­op­ments brew­ing here, both of which de­mand at­ten­tion. The first of which is that the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, tasked with con­ven­ing a se­lec­tion com­mit­tee and suit­ably em­pow­ered by in­tel­lect and re­sources to eval­u­ate the avail­able can­di­dates, might well be fac­ing the prospect of hav­ing its se­lec­tions for the post over­turned in Par­lia­ment.

While over­turned isn't the best way of de­scrib­ing the process of sift­ing down the or­der of mer­it list that the com­mit­tee pro­duces for Par­lia­ment's con­sid­er­a­tion, the sec­ond guess­ing of a se­lec­tion process that's sup­posed to call on the best minds avail­able for the task need­less­ly calls in­to ques­tion the PSC's role in the se­lec­tion of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. Stung by the PNM gov­ern­ment's re­fusal to ap­point its nom­i­nee Stephen Williams, and the leisure­ly pace that it adopt­ed in restart­ing the se­lec­tion process, PSC com­mit­tee mem­ber Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin threat­ened, in 2009, to re­sign from the com­mit­tee if the nom­i­nee for the post was de­clined again. Hav­ing de­lib­er­at­ed at length on the avail­able can­di­dates, it would seem sen­si­ble for Par­lia­ment to ac­cept the rec­om­men­da­tions of the PSC and, ac­knowl­edg­ing the is­sues that will arise in hav­ing for­eign trained lead­er­ship, de­sign a re­ten­tion pack­age for the prime nom­i­nee that will max­imise knowl­edge trans­fer while pro­vid­ing se­nior re­sources tasked with cul­tur­al trans­la­tion to bring the Cana­di­ans up to speed.

The sec­ond de­vel­op­ment which must be ac­knowl­edged is that through two se­lec­tion pro­ce­dures, the Po­lice Ser­vice of Trinidad and To­ba­go has emerged as demon­stra­bly be­hind the in­ter­na­tion­al curve in lead­er­ship ca­pac­i­ty and that gap must be ad­dressed de­ci­sive­ly. With­out lead­ers trained to the cut­ting edge of glob­al stan­dards, the Po­lice Ser­vice will re­main chal­lenged in its ef­forts to match in­creas­ing­ly en­tre­pre­neur­ial crim­i­nals. These and oth­er mat­ters are like­ly to be part of the sit­ting of the Low­er House on Fri­day and MPs should be pre­pared to bring to the de­bate sug­ges­tions and ini­tia­tives that will bring val­ue to the busi­ness of im­prov­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice and dri­ving its lead­er­ship ca­pac­i­ty for­ward.