Fran­cis Joseph

Just hours be­fore Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning ad­vised the Pres­i­dent to dis­solve Par­lia­ment, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert as­sured the pub­lic that the Po­lice Ser­vice was ready for a gen­er­al elec­tion. Philbert sum­moned a hasti­ly-arranged news con­fer­ence to deal with peo­ple who may have been tempt­ed to con­verge on Port-of-Spain to­day for il­le­gal pur­pos­es. But all that came to naught as there will be no Par­lia­ment sit­ting to­day, and the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion brought by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) against the Prime Min­is­ter will not be de­bat­ed to­day as planned.

When asked if the Po­lice Ser­vice was ready for a gen­er­al elec­tion, Philbert said: "We will al­ways be ready." He point­ed out that the po­lice had both the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as and the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Con­fer­ence to deal with last year, and Car­ni­val this year. He said that in his more than 40 years in the Po­lice Ser­vice, the po­lice have al­ways been ready for gen­er­al elec­tions. Yes­ter­day's news con­fer­ence was called to deal re­al­ly with his de­ci­sion not to grant per­mis­sion to the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions (Fi­tun) to hold pub­lic march­es to­day. The PNM want­ed per­mis­sion to march to show sol­i­dar­i­ty for Man­ning as the Par­lia­ment was sched­uled to de­bate the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in him.

Fi­tun want­ed per­mis­sion to march to protest the ills in so­ci­ety, which have been plagu­ing the coun­try for some time. De­spite the re­fusal of the com­mis­sion­er to grant re­quests, word on the ground yes­ter­day was that the PNM was still mo­bil­is­ing its sup­port­ers to "find their way in­to Port-of-Spain to lend sup­port to the Prime Min­is­ter." That was be­fore Man­ning's move and the news­flash around the coun­try at 3 pm. The planned in­va­sion of the city by PNM sup­port­ers us­ing bus­es and maxi taxis had been down­grad­ed as sup­port­ers were plan­ning to con­verge on the Red House from all di­rec­tions, wear­ing their PNM jer­seys. When told that sup­port­ers were still plan­ning to con­verge around Par­lia­ment, Philbert said: "Our in­ten­tion is to deal with any­one who wish­es to breach the law. "The law is clear...We will deal with it in a very de­ci­sive man­ner," he said.

"I have seen chal­lenges to the po­lice, per­haps be­cause of pre­vi­ous in­ci­dents. Let me say, of all that is in the past. We are deal­ing with is­sues where the po­lice must ex­er­cise its in­de­pen­dence, and ex­er­cise it to the fullest." When told that PM Man­ning was plan­ning to ap­peal the de­ci­sion to ban the march, Philbert said it was any­one's right to ap­peal, but he has had no fur­ther com­mu­ni­ca­tion from any­one, based on his de­ci­sions on Tues­day. The com­mis­sion­er said he has had no ap­pli­ca­tion to hold any pub­lic meet­ing. "As such, the com­mis­sion­er wish­es to ad­vise mem­bers of the pub­lic, who may be in­vit­ed to il­le­gal­ly en­gage in any meet­ings, or march­es, that this will not be tol­er­at­ed," he said. "The com­mis­sion­er ex­pects cit­i­zens to com­ply with the law and to as­sist to pre­serve law and or­der, not on­ly in Port-of-Spain, but in T&T. "We will have ad­e­quate num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers on stand­by to deal with any un­forseen sit­u­a­tion."