RAPHAEL JOHN LALL

Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards must pro­vide the coun­try with le­git­i­mate rea­sons why for­mer chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Nizam Mo­hammed was fired. The call was made by for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day on Wednes­day. He was speak­ing dur­ing a fo­rum ti­tled Equal­i­ty and Di­ver­si­ty in T&T, host­ed by the Sir Arthur Lewis In­sti­tute of So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Stud­ies at the De­part­ment of En­gi­neer­ing, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine. Pan­day said he had read the tran­script of the Hansard re­port of what Mo­hammed had said be­fore the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment and it did not con­tain a sin­gle word about there be­ing too many Africans in the Po­lice Ser­vice.

"Up to this day, the Pres­i­dent has not giv­en rea­sons for dis­miss­ing Mo­hammed...The rea­son is that there was none," he said. "Nizam was fired for rais­ing the is­sue of race and no oth­er rea­son. It's not what he said, it's the way he said it. They were all look­ing for an ex­cuse not to sup­port Nizam or for jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to pun­ish him for dar­ing to raise this is­sue."The Pres­i­dent re­voked Mo­hammed's ap­point­ment on April 14, af­ter com­ments made by the for­mer chair­man at a meet­ing of Par­lia­ment's Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee, that there was an eth­nic im­bal­ance in the hi­er­ar­chy of the Po­lice Ser­vice and he was com­mit­ted to chang­ing that sit­u­a­tion. Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (Do­ma), Gre­go­ry Aboud, who al­so spoke at the sem­i­nar, agreed with Pan­day that an ex­pla­na­tion must be pro­vid­ed on spe­cif­ic rea­sons for Mo­hammed's dis­missal.

"The Pres­i­dent needs to ex­plain why Mo­hammed was dis­missed," Aboud said. "I feel very strong­ly about that...There must be to­tal trans­paren­cy." Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan, in his con­tri­bu­tion, gave his per­son­al view that there was an eth­nic im­bal­ance in the armed forces which he de­scribed as be­ing "dan­ger­ous" for the coun­try. "I am con­cerned with the armed forces," he said. "I do not know the rea­sons why the Po­lice Ser­vice has so lit­tle East In­di­ans...maybe they do not meet the cri­te­ria. "What­ev­er the rea­sons, it is im­por­tant that the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion launch an in­quiry. "What hap­pened in Rwan­da, Fi­ji, Ugan­da can hap­pen here. "It is dan­ger­ous in a plur­al so­ci­ety to have one eth­nic group con­trol the arms and am­mu­ni­tion, be it East In­di­ans or Africans."