KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Hit­ting the ground run­ning, new­ly ap­point­ed Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) chair­man, Dr Wen­dell Wal­lace, has un­veiled plans to stream­line the ap­point­ment process for po­lice com­mis­sion­ers and deputy com­mis­sion­ers.

Dr Wal­lace told Guardian Me­dia his pri­or­i­ty is to im­ple­ment a suit­able rubric when screen­ing for these top na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty po­si­tions. Min­utes af­ter re­ceiv­ing his in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment at the Pres­i­dent’s House in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Dr Wal­lace said, “One of the things that I have in mind is to en­sure that there’s a suit­able rubric for the ap­point­ment of com­mis­sion­ers and deputy com­mis­sion­ers be­cause, from my un­der­stand­ing, there is no de­fin­i­tive rubric. So, that is some­thing that I would like to work on as a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty.”

With his mind set on the man­date of the PolSC, Dr Wal­lace said he was un­both­ered by the Op­po­si­tion’s crit­i­cism over his ap­point­ment. Dur­ing a de­bate in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal ob­ject­ed against Dr Wal­lace be­cause of his role at the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC).

Mooni­lal al­leged that there was no men­tion of this on Wal­lace’s CV. Dr Wal­lace was al­so re­ject­ed by the Op­po­si­tion be­cause Dr Mooni­lal said his ar­ti­cle en­ti­tled “Mass shoot­ings are here to Stay” puts in­to ques­tion his abil­i­ty to ad­dress crime. In re­sponse, Dr Wal­lace said yes­ter­day, “It’s not the first time that my char­ac­ter has been ques­tioned in any form, so for me that was noth­ing new. It was noth­ing that un­du­ly both­ered me. I have faith and con­fi­dence in what I do, and I have faith and con­fi­dence in what was put on my CV, so it did not both­er me any bit. It was a tad bit both­er­some, but noth­ing re­al­ly to let me lose any night’s sleep over. “In some places in the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly come to me to look at my CV as a tem­plate for pro­mo­tion, so to put that to rest, yes, my po­si­tion on the EBC was clear­ly stat­ed on my CV. That has nev­er changed since my ap­point­ment ... I think if Dr Mooni­lal prob­a­bly had a good look at the ar­ti­cle, then he would un­der­stand that I was speak­ing in my ca­pac­i­ty as a crim­i­nol­o­gist putting for­ward da­ta.”

Asked if he be­lieved serv­ing on the EBC as well as the PolSC was a con­flict of in­ter­est, he said no. “Cer­tain­ly not. I’ve read the Con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go. I’ve looked at the EBC’s re­mit. I’ve looked at the PolSC’s re­mit, and there’s no over­lap what­so­ev­er. There’s ab­solute­ly no con­flict of in­ter­est. What the EBC does is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from what oc­curs at the PolSC, so we can put that to rest; there’s no con­flict of in­ter­est what­so­ev­er.”

Nev­er­the­less, he said he was hap­py to serve as PolSC head. “It is re­al­ly a hum­bling ex­pe­ri­ence for me. I feel quite elat­ed, quite hap­py to serve Trinidad and To­ba­go in an­oth­er ca­pac­i­ty, so I am re­al­ly grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve,” he added.

Roger Ba­booram and re­turn­ing mem­ber Ian Ramd­hanie, two oth­er PolSC mem­bers re­ject­ed by the Op­po­si­tion, said they too were un­fazed by the Dr Mooni­lal’s crit­i­cisms.

The Op­po­si­tion said Ba­booram was un­suit­able for the PolSC, al­leg­ing claims of mis­con­duct while he was a hu­man re­source (HR) ex­ec­u­tive at Petrotrin. Ba­booram said, “I do be­lieve they are en­ti­tled to their opin­ion. My record is an un­blem­ished one, so I will leave it at that ... While I was at Petrotrin, I rep­re­sent­ed the or­gan­i­sa­tion on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions at the In­dus­tri­al Court and at the Min­istry of Labour, and I do re­tain an un­blem­ished record, and that could be echoed by nu­mer­ous peo­ple in the busi­ness. I have suc­cess­ful­ly moved on from that to multi­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions where I cur­rent­ly per­form du­ties, so I still stand be­hind my un­blem­ished record.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Dr Mooni­lal op­posed Ramd­hanie’s reap­point­ment to the PolSC be­cause of his lead­er­ship role at the Caribbean In­sti­tute for Pub­lic Safe­ty and Se­cu­ri­ty, a sub­sidiary of a firm that con­ducts sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness with the TTPS. How­ev­er, Ramd­hanie de­nies any con­flict of in­ter­est, as he said it was two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent en­ti­ties.

Ramd­hanie said, “There’s no con­flict of in­ter­est in my opin­ion. It is two sep­a­rate en­ti­ties. The par­ent com­pa­ny of our in­sti­tu­tion is a sep­a­rate com­pa­ny from ours. ... What­ev­er op­er­a­tional is­sues hap­pen to the par­ent com­pa­ny and the TTPS that are op­er­a­tional.

The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion has ab­solute­ly no deal­ings with op­er­a­tional is­sues with­in the TTPS. We deal at the top lev­el.”

Dr Wal­lace, Ba­booram and Ramd­hanie along with An­ni­ka Fritz-Browne and Ethel Hec­tor-Berke­ley re­ceived their in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment from Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo yes­ter­day.