SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Coun­sel Mar­tin Daly yes­ter­day de­scribed some of Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes’ lan­guage in her writ­ten state­ment per­tain­ing to mat­ters to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) as vague.

“That is my prob­lem with this, some of the lan­guage is opaque ...I would not say is de­lib­er­ate. But some of it is opaque. But es­sen­tial­ly, the Pres­i­dent is telling us a mer­it list was de­liv­ered but with­drawn. My view is once it is de­liv­ered she did not have the op­tion to de­cide that Par­lia­ment was not the ap­pro­pri­ate fo­rum,” Daly told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

Daly said while he was thank­ful Weekes has seen it fit to ac­cept the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty “to give us some in­for­ma­tion about what hap­pened at Pres­i­dent’s House...she is not clear any­more that it was Au­gust 12. It looks as though it might have been Au­gust 11. But it does not mat­ter.”

The Pres­i­dent con­firmed in her state­ment pub­lished yes­ter­day that the Or­der of Mer­it List in re­spect of the COP was de­liv­ered on Au­gust 11, 2021 to the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent (OTP) “and with­drawn al­most im­me­di­ate­ly there­after that day. I, there­fore, had no list from which a mer­it list could is­sue. To date, no oth­er list has since been sub­mit­ted,” the state­ment dis­closed.

In giv­ing an analy­sis of Weekes’ state­ment, Daly said he had a prob­lem with its tone.

“To me, the es­sen­tial flaw in this state­ment is that I do not be­lieve that it was opened to the Pres­i­dent to ei­ther par­tic­i­pate or ac­qui­esce in a with­draw­al of the mer­it list that the then chair of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion had come to de­liv­er. I do not be­lieve that was open to as a mat­ter of law. And it fol­lows from that ...that I dis­agree that her ac­tions or omis­sions did not vi­o­late the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

Daly was one of sev­er­al who called for an­swers in­volv­ing the on­go­ing Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion­er im­broglio.

He said while Weekes made a lot of ref­er­ence to the judge­ment of Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo who we owed a debt of grat­i­tude to for the time frame in which she did the case and the thor­ough­ness in which she ex­pressed her views “whether there would be suc­cess­ful ap­peals is an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent mat­ter. Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo was very clear that 123 (4) of the Con­sti­tu­tion man­dat­ed the Pres­i­dent to is­sue a mer­it list in re­spect of each per­son nom­i­nat­ed to hold of­fice and I think that is what she had to do.”

Daly said if oth­er au­thor­i­ties had a prob­lem with the peo­ple on the list, he said, “then the ob­vi­ous thing to do was to raise that in Par­lia­ment” when it came be­fore the House.

Yes­ter­day, for­mer com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith opt­ed to keep silent with re­gards to com­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s state­ment on Sat­ur­day that he wrote the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion in 2020 to say he had lost con­fi­dence in Grif­fith.

“I have no in­ten­tion to do so. I am not go­ing to make any com­ments as it per­tains to the com­ments made by the Prime Min­is­ter. What I would state is that this is not about Gary Grif­fith. I con­tin­ue to state that we have in­sti­tu­tions...in­sti­tu­tions must do what is re­quired. The coun­try is wait­ing to ex­hale.”

Grif­fith said the best way for us to deal with this sit­u­a­tion is from an ob­jec­tive per­spec­tive.

“The mer­it list was de­liv­ered to her Ex­cel­len­cy the Pres­i­dent...the Pres­i­dent has no oth­er choice...it is in the Con­sti­tu­tion...she has no dis­cre­tion. The on­ly op­tion she has when she re­ceived that Mer­it list is to for­ward it to Par­lia­ment.”

Grif­fith said, “The PSC does not have the au­thor­i­ty through cata boil, where it is, you could give some­thing to the Pres­i­dent and then ask for it lat­er on in the af­ter­noon. There is no au­thor­i­ty, What­ev­er is the rea­son that the PSC chair­man de­cid­ed to do some­thing like that which she has no au­thor­i­ty to do that...that is her busi­ness. She will deal with that and an­swer that.”

He al­so stat­ed that the Pres­i­dent al­so “had no au­thor­i­ty to give any doc­u­ment back to the PSC. Her on­ly op­tion...she has no dis­cre­tion is to for­ward that Mer­it List to Par­lia­ment. If and when that is done, the faster the bet­ter, Par­lia­ment can then de­cide who is the sub­stan­tive com­mis­sion­er of po­lice... who­ev­er that may be. It does not have to be me. It def­i­nite­ly may not be me. It could be me...it does not mat­ter.”

The fact re­mains, Grif­fith said, in­sti­tu­tions must do their job.

Grif­fith said for­mer PSC chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad has failed mis­er­ably.

“She has done many things that would be dealt with even­tu­al­ly, as it per­tains to mak­ing false state­ments that I in­ter­fered with in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Al­so re­mov­ing a sit­ting Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice at the time with­out au­tho­ri­sa­tion by the PSC mem­bers...and she will have to an­swer for that.” But as it per­tains to where the coun­try will go from here, Grif­fith said “.the best op­tion is for the Pres­i­dent to do what is re­quired....She has no oth­er al­ter­na­tive. No oth­er op­tion. ...as in law... is to for­ward that Mer­it list to Par­lia­ment. The faster that is done the faster this coun­try will have a sub­stan­tive Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.”