To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

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.