Richard Lord

For­mer head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Regi­nald Du­mas says sacked chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Nizam Mo­hammed did not have the con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­i­ty to ad­dress any per­ceived eth­nic im­bal­ance in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.Du­mas said so in an in­ter­view fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards' re­vo­ca­tion of Mo­hammed's ap­point­ment yes­ter­day.Du­mas said the grounds on which Mo­hammed's ap­point­ment was ter­mi­nat­ed were cor­rect.He said Mo­hammed did not dis­play the re­quired com­pe­tence and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as was re­quired.

Du­mas said Mo­hammed had em­bar­rassed the Gov­ern­ment, up­set the po­lice of­fi­cers and had lacked the cred­i­bil­i­ty re­quired to con­tin­ue in of­fice.He said the for­mer House Speak­er should have re­signed in­stead of be­ing de­fi­ant."It was not what one said but how one said it," Du­mas added.

He said the en­tire is­sue of per­ceived eth­nic im­bal­ance in the Po­lice Ser­vice should have been dealt with dif­fer­ent­ly by Mo­hammed.He said in­equities should not be looked at in the Po­lice Ser­vice alone but oth­er sec­tors as well.Du­mas called for a na­tion­al di­a­logue to dis­cuss is­sues af­fect­ing the peo­ple of T&T.He said there were not on­ly in­equities in eth­nic­i­ty but in gen­der, re­li­gion and be­tween the two is­lands.He not­ed that the peo­ple of To­ba­go had some very se­ri­ous con­cerns about the ex­ist­ing re­la­tions with Trinidad and those mat­ters must be ad­dressed prop­er­ly.