Yes­ter­day's de­ci­sion by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards to re­voke the ap­point­ment of Nizam Mo­hammed as the chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion ought to bring an end to the ten-day im­broglio caused by Mo­hammed's ex­treme­ly di­vi­sive com­ments. Mr Mo­hammed has served this coun­try long and well in var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties. But, once he had made clear that he had no in­ten­tion of re­sign­ing, his dis­missal was nec­es­sary in or­der to pro­tect this coun­try's uni­ty. This is be­cause his com­ments about the short­age of East In­di­ans among the up­per ech­e­lons of the lo­cal po­lice ser­vice had the po­ten­tial to di­vide polic­ing ef­forts at a time when sin­gu­lar and fo­cused uni­ty of pur­pose in those ef­forts has nev­er been more nec­es­sary.

In­stead of unit­ing to in­ves­ti­gate and ap­pre­hend the mur­der­ers, rapists, kid­nap­pers and thieves who stalk this land, Mr Mo­hammed's com­ments could have led to a state of vir­tu­al an­ar­chy among lo­cal law en­forcers. Paral­y­sis of ef­fort would sure­ly have fol­lowed with pre­dictably dis­as­trous con­se­quences for the crime rate. Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Jack Ewats­ki was on the ball when he called on the 6,000-plus mem­bers of the lo­cal po­lice ser­vice to re­main fo­cused on the job they are be­ing paid to do.

He said this in­cludes pro­vid­ing safe­ty to the pub­lic, ap­pre­hend­ing crim­i­nals and solv­ing crimes. "This will be our main fo­cus, re­gard­less of what hap­pens in the po­lice ser­vice," Ewats­ki said, in a speech at the launch of the 21st Cen­tu­ry Po­lice Ini­tia­tive in the West­ern Di­vi­sion.

Mr Mo­hammed's com­ments, as well, had the po­ten­tial to send Trinidad and To­ba­go down the slip­pery slope that coun­tries such as Guyana, Fi­ji and Kenya have trav­elled. These are all coun­tries which have come close to be­ing rent asun­der by racial vi­o­lence. In a coun­try in which the two main eth­nic groups are so close-both in their num­bers and in their liv­ing arrange­ments-such a de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in in­ter-per­son­al re­la­tions would have made T&T un­govern­able and con­tributed to an ex­o­dus of the na­tion's best and bright­est which would have re­sult­ed in the econ­o­my go­ing back­wards.

In terms of the fate of Mr Mo­hammed, while the Pres­i­dent may have de­liv­ered the fi­nal blow, the die would have been cast when the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter is­sued a sting­ing and con­dem­na­to­ry re­lease on March 28 which stat­ed that the for­mer chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion "must be held ac­count­able for his in­flam­ma­to­ry and un­wise re­marks which in no way rep­re­sent the views of the Gov­ern­ment." The Pres­i­dent, who had ini­tial­ly telegraphed that he would is­sue a state­ment by Wednes­day, seems to have speed­ed up his de­ci­sion-mak­ing. Un­like some pre­vi­ous de­ci­sions-such as his ill-fat­ed ap­point­ment of an In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion whose mem­bers all re­signed for var­i­ous rea­sons in less than a fort­night-the Pres­i­dent al­so ap­pears to have re­ceived sound le­gal ad­vice.

Clear­ly, Mr Mo­hammed was pro­vid­ed with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard. Ac­cord­ing to the Pres­i­dent's 82-word state­ment is­sued just be­fore lunch yes­ter­day, he had a "most cor­dial meet­ing with Mr Mo­hammed on Fri­day April 1, 2011 when the busi­ness of the com­mis­sion was dis­cussed."

One in­di­ca­tion of the cor­dial­i­ty of the meet­ing was Mr Mo­hammed's re­laxed smiles and pos­i­tive body lan­guage at the end of the meet­ing. The smiles of Fri­day would have turned to frowns on Mon­day when the for­mer chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion un­der­stood that his ap­point­ment was be­ing re­voked be­cause he had failed to per­form his du­ties in a re­spon­si­ble or time­ly man­ner and demon­strat­ed a lack of com­pe­tence.

Mr Mo­hammed may choose to chal­lenge his dis­missal if he wish­es. That is his con­sti­tu­tion­al right in the democ­ra­cy in which he lives. But he would do so know­ing that he has the sup­port of nei­ther the Gov­ern­ment nor the Op­po­si­tion-both of which are com­mit­ted to re­pu­di­at­ing the forces of di­vi­sion in this com­plex and plur­al so­ci­ety.