Richard Lord

Dis­missed chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, Nizam Mo­hammed is seek­ing to mount an un­prece­dent­ed le­gal chal­lenge against Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards' de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate his ap­point­ment.Mo­hammed, in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said he would ad­vise his at­tor­neys to re­view the Con­sti­tu­tion to de­ter­mine if there was any pos­si­bil­i­ty of chal­leng­ing the Pres­i­dent's de­ci­sion.Told that un­der the ex­ist­ing Con­sti­tu­tion the ac­tions of the Pres­i­dent could not be chal­lenged in a court of law, Mo­hammed re­spond­ed: "That is the area of the law that we would be look­ing at."I do not be­lieve that any­one, in­clud­ing the Pres­i­dent, is above the Con­sti­tu­tion and can act in a man­ner that is detri­men­tal to any in­di­vid­ual," he added.Richards dis­missed Mo­hammed as PSC chair­man on Mon­day on the grounds that he failed to per­form his du­ties in a re­spon­si­ble and time­ly man­ner and demon­strat­ed a lack of com­pe­tence.

This fol­lowed Mo­hammed's promise to work to ad­dress an al­leged eth­nic im­bal­ance in the Po­lice Ser­vice.He re­newed his pub­lic call yes­ter­day for Pres­i­dent Richards to ex­plain the rea­sons why he was fired."I con­tin­ue to make a call pub­licly while my lawyers are look­ing at the mat­ter," he added. Mo­hammed, a for­mer Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, said his "fun­da­men­tal rights un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion have been breached and the Pres­i­dent act­ed in such a man­ner that he did not fol­low due process."He said he was baf­fled "by the un­due haste un­der which the Pres­i­dent act­ed and that has me to­tal­ly amazed."Asked if he had any re­grets about the en­tire is­sue, he said: "Ab­solute­ly none, my con­science is clear, ab­solute­ly none!"Mo­hammed said he re­mained con­cerned about the is­sue, which was "the fight for equal­i­ty amongst all our peo­ple."He said he was "about to do my lit­tle bit with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice and they fired me for do­ing that.

"They fired me for try­ing to give every­body equal op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice, re­gard­less of their eth­nic ori­gin," he added.Told that the oth­er com­mis­sion­ers had said that was not part of his re­mit, Mo­hammed said he did not agree with that po­si­tion."I wasn't put there to be a cler­i­cal of­fi­cer...I was put there to re­or­gan­ise the Po­lice Ser­vice so that it will be­come ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive in pro­tect­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic against the scourge of crime that we are wit­ness­ing," he said. Told that there had been claims of eth­nic im­bal­ance in oth­er pro­fes­sions as well, Mo­hammed quick­ly re­spond­ed, say­ing he was "not con­cerned about those."My re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was to look at the Po­lice Ser­vice...Let the politi­cians, or who­ev­er, look at the oth­er ar­eas," he said.Mo­hammed said the oth­er com­mis­sion­ers should have re­signed."I think all of them should have gone as well and give the Po­lice Ser­vice a bet­ter chance...By un­der­min­ing me while I was there, they have all tar­nished them­selves," he said.With­out call­ing names, Mo­hammed said one com­mis­sion mem­ber missed most of the meet­ings and he was still on the job."We had one mem­ber who at­tend­ed about four out of about 20 meet­ings, and it ap­pears that the Pres­i­dent in­tends to do noth­ing about that," he said.

Mo­hammed said the law pro­vid­ed for a mem­ber to be dis­missed if he missed four con­sec­u­tive meet­ings with­out a rea­son­able ex­cuse.He said the un­named com­mis­sion­er "is now hav­ing the pro­tec­tion of his two co­horts in that re­gard."Mo­hammed said he was ex­pect­ed to take le­gal ac­tion against the news­pa­pers which pub­lished mis­lead­ing head­lines af­ter the March 25 meet­ing, which he said caused con­fu­sion in the coun­try.He said the Hansard re­port of his re­marks at the meet­ing was not dis­cussed dur­ing his meet­ing with Pres­i­dent Richards last week.

What the con­sti­tu­tion says

A le­gal source cit­ed Sec­tion 38 (1) of the T&T Con­sti­tu­tion, which said: Sub­ject to Sec­tion 36, the Pres­i­dent shall not be an­swer­able to any court for the per­for­mance of the func­tions of his of­fice for any act done by him in the per­for­mance of those func­tions.