The de­ci­sion by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to re­ject the nom­i­na­tion of act­ing As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Wen­dell Lu­cas to the po­si­tion of Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice has caused con­tro­ver­sy in its af­ter­math. The House di­vid­ed 20 MPs vot­ing “no” on the Gov­ern­ment side and 12 MPs ab­stain­ing on the Op­po­si­tion side.

There has been no ex­pla­na­tion and there will be no ex­pla­na­tion as the sys­tem was changed in 2006 to re­move the prime min­is­te­r­i­al ve­to over rec­om­men­da­tions from the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and to trans­fer those rec­om­men­da­tions through the Pres­i­dent from the com­mis­sion to the floor of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Trans­paren­cy has been brought to the process at the ex­pense of any min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty which the Prime Min­is­ter pre­vi­ous­ly bore. There was no pub­lic crit­i­cism of Lu­cas in the de­bate and the de­ci­sion of the Gov­ern­ment cau­cus to vote against the nom­i­na­tion af­ter min­is­te­r­i­al praise es­tab­lish­es the point that the House does not have to give any rea­sons for the way that it choos­es to vote.

To un­der­stand the ef­fect of the change that was made by the con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment in Act No 6 of 2006 to bring this new process in­to ef­fect, the Hansard re­port­ing of the de­bate on the amend­ment pro­vides some in­sight. The mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion them­selves as well as their nom­i­nees for Com­mis­sion­er and Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice are now all re­quired to be sent to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives through the Pres­i­dent for a vote by af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion of the House.

In pi­lot­ing the amend­ment in 2006, then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had this to say:

“What the leg­is­la­tion now be­fore the House pro­pos­es, is that the prime min­is­te­r­i­al ve­to dis­ap­pears but that the name, as iden­ti­fied by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, will it­self come be­fore the Par­lia­ment and al­so will be the sub­ject of af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion. The dif­fer­ence be­tween this one and the ap­point­ment of the mem­bers of the com­mis­sion is that the po­lice of­fi­cer who is go­ing to be the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice will be, in fact, a pub­lic ser­vant and has no way of de­fend­ing him­self. In fact, where­as in­di­vid­u­als can say, I do not wish to serve on the po­lice ser­vice com­mis­sion and, there­fore, I do not want to sub­scribe to that, a po­lice of­fi­cer who has served in the ser­vice and has le­git­i­mate as­pi­ra­tions to be com­mis­sion­er of po­lice re­al­ly does not have avail­able to him the op­tion of say­ing, well, I am not go­ing to sub­scribe to that process and sub­mit my­self to that lev­el of scruti­ny which could be abused.

 “If he takes that po­si­tion what, in fact, he does, he pass­es up the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve the po­lice ser­vice at the high­est lev­el. That op­tion re­al­ly is not one avail­able to him and, there­fore, this process too suf­fers from a dis­abil­i­ty. Again, how­ev­er, Mr Speak­er, we have de­cid­ed in all the cir­cum­stances to go along with this process as iden­ti­fied in our dis­cus­sions, and we are pre­pared to give it a chance to work to see how in prac­tice it will op­er­ate.” (Hansard, House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, March 15, 2006, p 9).

In 2006, the Gov­ern­ment of the day was un­com­fort­able with the com­pro­mise that they made with the Op­po­si­tion to in­tro­duce this new sys­tem, but de­cid­ed to give it a chance to see how it would work.

Then op­po­si­tion leader Bas­deo Pan­day had this to say:

“I have read cer­tain crit­i­cisms on the re­moval of the ve­to, com­ing from wannabe politi­cians, that the Prime Min­is­ter still has the pow­er of ve­to which he can ex­er­cise by his ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment. First­ly, to in­sist oth­er­wise than a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty—that there be a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty—would in ef­fect be trans­fer­ring that ve­to to the Op­po­si­tion. The Op­po­si­tion would now be able to ve­to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. I am talk­ing about the pos­i­tive res­o­lu­tion as op­posed to the spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty. We de­cid­ed against that be­cause the Gov­ern­ment has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to deal with crime and, there­fore, it can­not put the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ap­point the com­mis­sion­er on the Op­po­si­tion. They must be re­spon­si­ble at every turn. We thought that was a good sug­ges­tion; that in­sist­ing on a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty was not the right thing to do.” (p 12).

The pref­er­ence by the then Op­po­si­tion for af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion, rather than a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty, guar­an­teed open de­bate and re­moved se­cre­cy. Is more need­ed?

Prof Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at the UWI.