Asha Javeed

For­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj yes­ter­day slammed the si­lence of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the in­flam­ma­to­ry com­ments of chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Nizam Mo­hammed, even as he has de­scribed those state­ments as "ex­treme­ly provoca­tive," "of­fen­sive" and "bor­der on sedi­tion." Mo­hammed said on Fri­day that there were not enough East In­di­ans in the up­per ech­e­lons of the Po­lice Ser­vice. "These state­ments, to a per­son like me of East In­di­an de­scent, are of­fen­sive and I am sure would be re­gard­ed as of­fen­sive to all right think­ing per­sons of T&T, re­gard­less of their eth­nic ori­gin," he said in a re­lease yes­ter­day.

Mo­hammed's state­ments, he said, rep­re­sent­ed an agen­da that fu­ture ap­point­ments and pro­mo­tions of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion would be based on eth­nic­i­ty and eth­nic dis­po­si­tion and not on mer­it.

Futher­more, Ma­haraj con­demned Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's "deaf­en­ing si­lence" and her "in­ac­tion on these dan­ger­ous state­ments which im­pact ad­verse­ly on racial har­mo­ny and na­tion­al uni­ty." "I am sur­prised that the Prime Min­is­ter has not tak­en im­me­di­ate ac­tion as po­lit­i­cal head of the Gov­ern­ment to pub­licly call for the re­moval of Mr Nizam Mo­hammed as chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion," he said.

Ma­haraj said it was the Prime Min­is­ter's du­ty to seek an au­di­ence with Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, with a re­quest to re­voke Mo­hammed's ap­point­ment un­der Sec­tion 126 (4) of the con­sti­tu­tion.

"The ne­glect and or omis­sion of the Prime Min­is­ter to have act­ed on this mat­ter since last Fri­day may give the im­pres­sion that the state­ments made by the chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion re­flect the present agen­da of her Gov­ern­ment," he said. He called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ac­count to the coun­try on her Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion with re­gard to "bod­ies in Trinidad and To­ba­go which do not have an "eth­nic bal­ance."

The Prime Min­is­ter, said Ma­haraj, had a du­ty to recog­nise that con­tin­ued in­ac­tion on her part as Prime Min­is­ter to "cor­rect the po­lit­i­cal evils which have oc­curred un­der her ad­min­is­tra­tion in the last ten months would con­tin­ue to dam­age and de­stroy the fu­ture of our coun­try." He not­ed that in coun­tries such as Guyana, Fi­ji and some African na­tions, when such sim­i­lar state­ments were made by peo­ple in pub­lic of­fices, na­tion­al uni­ty was ob­struct­ed. Ma­haraj sent a copy of his re­lease to the Prime Min­is­ter and the Pres­i­dent.