In a surprising political turn, the Parliament voted unanimously to veto the candidacy of Canadian police officer Neal Parker. It marked an important start to the Tenth Parliament, and may signal the beginning of more meaningful co-operation between the ruling party and its elected opposition in the business of running the state affairs of Trinidad and Tobago. Parker's rejection came after discussions between both parties outside of the House on the matter, and while the PNM did not exactly side with the People's Partnership, their choice of abstention from the voting process returned the result they agreed on. The grounds for Parker's rejection will also provide the basis for the anticipated fate of the candidacy of the next choice of the Police Service Commission, another Canadian officer, Dwyane D Gibbs.
Both Parker and Gibbs served previously on the selection assessment committees gathered by Penn State University, in the 2008 winnowing of candidates for the post of Trinidad and Tobago's Commissioner of Police. These circumstances make the process of selecting the next Commissioner of Police even more complicated. Will the government, in the face of the Opposition's stated disinterest in appointing a Commissioner of Police drawn from the ranks of foreign police officers, select one of the American candidates? Other complications arise in the vehement reading of the laws surrounding the selection process by Senior Counsel Israel Khan, who argues that there is no support for the selection of a foreign police officer in the law books of this country.
In response to this challenge of the process, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has responded that "This Parliament expressly provides that someone can come from outside of the Police Service. The PSC was not acting outside of the law." A committee composed of Government and Opposition members is to be appointed to review the selection process. Clearly, there is much to overhaul and rethink in a selection process which has, after three years and $8 million, failed to deliver a candidate for the post of Commissioner of Police that's palatable to the public and to Parliament. Even after an overhaul of the process, in the wake of the 2008 debacle which saw the government of the day reject Stephen Williams for the post, the process is failing the country so clearly that Opposition Leader Keith Rowley conceded that "we did pass bad law," and that the process simply "was not working."
The Opposition Leader's call for a review of the process is one that the government should take seriously, but that is a process that will require time that simply isn't available any more. In three months, acting Commissioner of Police James Philbert's fourth extension of his term of service in the role will run out, and the government is challenged to craft a short to medium-term strategy to address the leadership crisis in the Police Service, while implementing its review of the selection process. The challenges facing the Government are not to be underestimated. While criminal activity continues apace, the state has been caught in a death spiral of bureaucracy, working to get the appointment of a police commissioner right for years longer than it takes the average gang to organise their leadership struggles through public assassinations.
The options seem disturbingly clear-cut at this juncture. The government can skip down the merit list, rejecting nominees until it runs out of options, or it can bite down on a bitter pill and appoint the best option on terms that it can sell to the rank and file of the Police Service. While the Police Service Social and Welfare Association has openly declared that it is unwilling to embrace a foreigner in the leadership role, the organisation must also acknowledge that out of 73 applicants for the post of CoP, only four came from Trinidad and Tobago. Crafting an approach that moves beyond this difficult situation is likely to call for a contractual relationship with the candidate which involves a manpower development agreement that will close the gaps in the clearly faltering leadership lineage within the Police Service.