Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj has been grant­ed con­di­tion­al leave to go to the Privy Coun­cil with his le­gal bat­tle against the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to ex­tend the term of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

Jus­tices of Ap­peal Mark Mo­hammed, Maria Wil­son and Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh gave him leave yes­ter­day to ap­peal to the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil against the Court of Ap­peal’s May 8 judg­ment.

Ap­pel­late Judges Prakash Moo­sai, Mark Mo­hammed, and James Aboud had re­ject­ed Ma­haraj’s ap­peal against Judge Ricky Rahim’s dis­missal of his law­suit in Jan­u­ary.

The Gov­ern­ment has since ex­tend­ed the con­tract of Hare­wood-Christo­pher by one year.

In the law­suit, Ma­haraj chal­lenged a de­ci­sion tak­en by the Cab­i­net to ex­tend Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s term by a year un­der Sec­tion 75 of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act be­fore she reached re­tire­ment age.

Rep­re­sent­ed by a le­gal team led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan, Ma­haraj con­tend­ed that the pro­vi­sion is in­con­sis­tent with Sec­tion 123 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which gives the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) the pow­er to rec­om­mend the ap­point­ment or re­moval of the po­lice com­mis­sion­er and deputy com­mis­sion­ers of po­lice to be ap­proved by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. 

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the Cab­i­net re­lied on an af­fi­davit from Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion Corey Har­ri­son, who serves as sec­re­tary for the  PolSC. 

Har­ri­son stat­ed that the PolSC was aware of Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s age and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of her re­ceiv­ing an ex­ten­sion when she was first ap­point­ed in Feb­ru­ary last year, af­ter act­ing in the post pre­vi­ous­ly. He claimed sim­i­lar ex­ten­sions were af­ford­ed to for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­ers James Philbert and Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob.

Ma­haraj was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al, Kent Sam­lal, Natasha Bis­ram, Robert Ab­dool-Mitchell and Vishaal Siewsaran. Rishi Dass, SC, and Vanes­sa Gopaul rep­re­sent­ed the AG’s Of­fice.