Derek Achong

A vic­to­ry for the cit­i­zens of T&T and the T&T Con­sti­tu­tion. 

These were the words used by so­cial me­dia ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj yes­ter­day to de­scribe his le­gal vic­to­ry in an in­ter­pre­ta­tion law­suit over the need for the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) to get the ap­proval of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives be­fore ap­point­ing an act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er. 

While Ma­haraj said he was pleased by Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo up­hold­ing his case, he claimed the le­gal vic­to­ry was bit­ter-sweet, as it meant that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) would be with­out a com­mis­sion­er at its helm for quite some time.

Ma­haraj claimed that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment should bear re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the un­cer­tain­ty caused, as the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s move to give for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith an act­ing ap­point­ment af­ter his term end­ed in Au­gust, was based on a se­ries of le­gal no­tices, in­clud­ing one pi­lot­ed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi ear­li­er this year. 

Ma­haraj stat­ed that Al-Rawi ini­tial­ly de­fend­ed the le­gal no­tice be­fore his of­fice sup­port­ed his at­tor­neys’ sub­mis­sions on the is­sue in the law­suit be­fore Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo. 

“One would have ex­pect­ed, there­fore, that any­one with a ba­sic un­der­stand­ing of the Eng­lish lan­guage would have been able to dis­cern that all pro­to­cols de­tailed with­in the leg­is­la­tion were manda­to­ry for fill­ing such an im­por­tant and in­de­pen­dent po­si­tion,” Ma­haraj said, as he called on Al-Rawi to re­sign. 

“In opt­ing to al­low the rogue PSC chair­woman to bla­tant­ly vi­o­late the con­sti­tu­tion­al process, and then de­fend her po­si­tion in the face of rea­son­able ob­jec­tions, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has man­u­fac­tured the cri­sis T&T now finds it­self in and should be forced to re­sign for the role that he played, as well as vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty he now cre­ates in the Gov­ern­ment,” Ma­haraj added. 

In a sub­se­quent press re­lease, Ma­haraj took aim at Grif­fith, who him­self took to so­cial me­dia to com­ment on the out­come of the law­suit. 

Claim­ing that Grif­fith’s com­ments were mis­lead­ing, Ma­haraj ques­tioned his claims that the out­come was the re­sult of a con­spir­a­cy to have him re­moved from the post. 

“First and fore­most, if in­deed there was a con­spir­a­cy by a mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment, whom he re­ferred to sub­tex­tu­al­ly, that wished for him to no longer be Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, then this has al­ready been ac­com­plished on Au­gust 17th, 2021, when his con­tract came to an end. There is no need for a fur­ther con­spir­a­cy to com­plete a task which has al­ready oc­curred nat­u­ral­ly,” Ma­haraj said. 

Ma­haraj al­so took aim at Grif­fith’s claim that he nev­er ap­plied for the act­ing po­si­tion af­ter his three-year term end­ed. 

“As some­one trust­ed to en­force the law, you would ex­pect that a man des­per­ate to re­tain the po­si­tion of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice would be per­cep­tive enough to un­der­stand when an ac­tion is il­le­gal. How­ev­er, the fact that he will­ing­ly ac­cept­ed the ap­point­ment with­out even a hint of ap­pre­hen­sion demon­strates ei­ther fla­grant ig­no­rance or wan­ton dis­re­gard of those very same laws,” Ma­haraj said. 

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, at­tor­ney and for­mer long-stand­ing PSC mem­ber Mar­tin George called on the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to come to­geth­er to solve the cri­sis by re­con­sti­tut­ing the com­mis­sion through the ap­point­ment of mem­bers. 

“We need them to act and ral­ly to­geth­er, as this is a na­tion­al cri­sis we are fac­ing at this point and not make it in­to a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball,” George said. 

“What is re­quired at this time is a lev­el of po­lit­i­cal ma­tu­ri­ty that we have nev­er seen be­fore from our politi­cians, but we are hop­ing they would dis­play it by ris­ing to the oc­ca­sion.”

George not­ed that while the of­fice re­mains va­cant, sev­er­al pow­ers ex­er­cised by the of­fice­hold­er, in­clud­ing be­ing the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer of the TTPS, would be stymied and de­layed un­til the com­mis­sion can ap­point an act­ing com­mis­sion­er. 

George al­so re­it­er­at­ed calls for politi­cians to con­sid­er over­haul­ing the en­tire process for the se­lec­tion of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, as he claimed it is cur­rent­ly too com­plex and cum­ber­some. 

“I have said it be­fore that it is eas­i­er to ap­point a Pres­i­dent, Chief Jus­tice, or Prime Min­is­ter than a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er,” George said.