Richard Lord

The Op­po­si­tion in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day de­clined to ap­prove one of the three nom­i­nees for the post of deputy com­mis­sion­ers of po­lice, Jack Ewats­ki, a for­eign na­tion­al. The11 Op­po­si­tion Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment present, in­clud­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, ab­stained when the vote was tak­en yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. While there was unan­i­mous sup­port from both Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion for the two lo­cal nom­i­nees–Stephen Williams and Mau­rice Pig­gott–the Op­po­si­tion with­held its sup­port when the vote was tak­en for Ewats­ki.

The turn of events took place as the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives met for its first full work­ing sit­ting for the new par­lia­men­tary term at the Red House in Port-of-Spain. Four gov­ern­ment mo­tions seek­ing ap­proval of the House for the posts of com­mis­sion­er of po­lice and three deputies were de­bat­ed si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. The mo­tions were pre­sent­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Ear­li­er in the de­bate, the nom­i­nee for com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, Cana­di­an Neal Park­er was re­ject­ed in the in­ter­est of trans­paren­cy. He was a mem­ber of a pre­vi­ous group of eval­u­a­tors which looked at nom­i­nees for the post.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate, said the en­tire process for the se­lec­tion of a com­mis­sion­er of po­lice must be re­viewed. He said in T&T it was eas­i­er to ap­point a pres­i­dent, prime min­is­ter and chief jus­tice, but al­most im­pos­si­ble to ap­point a com­mis­sion­er of po­lice un­der the ex­ist­ing sys­tem. That sys­tem pro­vides for the suc­cess­ful nom­i­nees to be sub­mit­ted to Par­lia­ment by the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion for ap­proval. On the pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sion, the sys­tem failed as a com­mis­sion­er was not ap­point­ed. Row­ley said yes­ter­day that "we did pass bad law" and "it was not work­ing" to achieve the de­sired ob­jec­tives. He said the present sys­tem was prov­ing to be in­ef­fi­cient and non-trans­par­ent.

"Some­thing is fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong with this process," he in­sist­ed.

"We went over­board" and "we sold our­selves short" were some of the things Row­ley said in ref­er­ence to the process to ap­point a com­mis­sion­er of po­lice. He said, how­ev­er, that the law had some good parts. He said the in­creased pow­er giv­en to a new com­mis­sion­er of po­lice was good and should be re­tained. Row­ley added that leg­is­la­tors should "re­move any of­fend­ing parts." He said Park­er was re­ject­ed "for good rea­sons." In an at­tempt to show the lack of trans­paren­cy of the process, Row­ley said he want­ed to know who was the next nom­i­nee in line for the job. He an­swered al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, say­ing: "We don't know." He said it was un­for­tu­nate that the Prime Min­is­ter had to get in­for­ma­tion on the first choice nom­i­nee from the news­pa­per as noth­ing of­fi­cial had been pro­vid­ed to her or oth­er Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment.

And Row­ley al­so said for­eign­ers should not be in­vit­ed to ap­ply for the job. He said what was more ap­pro­pri­ate for the coun­try was for the best avail­able na­tion­al of this coun­try–liv­ing here or abroad–should be el­i­gi­ble for the job. In wind­ing up de­bate yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the next in line was Dwayne D Gibbs, an­oth­er Cana­di­an na­tion­al. And at around 4 pm, leader of gov­ern­ment busi­ness Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said de­bate on the sec­ond nom­i­nee for the post of com­mis­sion­er of po­lice would take place on Fri­day. He said the House is al­so ex­pect­ed to de­bate two oth­er mat­ters on that day. They are bills on pub­lic pro­cure­ment and dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty and to re­peal and re­place the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Act.