Renu­ka Singh

Se­nior Coun­sel Mar­tin Daly is call­ing on both Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to jus­ti­fy an al­leged meet­ing with for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was asked by mem­bers of the me­dia on the week­end, whether he met with Seep­er­sad at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent on Au­gust 12 and did not an­swer the ques­tion di­rect­ly.

In­stead, he said that he car­ried out his du­ty.

Daly, in his state­ment yes­ter­day, said that Sec­tion 81 of the Con­sti­tu­tion does oblige the Prime Min­is­ter “to keep the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic ful­ly in­formed con­cern­ing the gen­er­al con­duct of the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go” and “to pro­vide any in­for­ma­tion she may re­quest with re­spect to any par­tic­u­lar mat­ter re­lat­ing to the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go”.

He added that “this du­ty to in­form the Pres­i­dent does not seem to pro­vide an ex­cuse for meet­ing with the then Chair of the PolSC at Pres­i­dent’s House when the Chair was there on PolSC busi­ness”.

“More­over, this sec­tion can­not jus­ti­fy the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic tak­ing in­struc­tions in re­spect of the work of the PolSC if that is what hap­pened on Au­gust 12,” he said.

“It ap­pears to me that the Pres­i­dent can­not, on her own ini­tia­tive, take legal­ly ef­fec­tive ac­tion or omit to do any­thing that she is re­quired by law to do re­gard­ing the PolSC, based on in­for­ma­tion she re­ceives from the Prime Min­is­ter un­less some spe­cif­ic sec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion or oth­er law en­ables or em­pow­ers her to do so,” Daly said.

“The seek­ing of refuge by ref­er­ence to the du­ty to in­form, to ex­plain ap­par­ent in­ter­fer­ence in the work of the PolSC, in­creas­es the ur­gent need for the Pres­i­dent to do the right thing,” he said.

“The of­fice of Pres­i­dent ought to ex­plain the go­ings-on at Pres­i­dent’s House on Au­gust 12, 2021, and the ba­sis of what Her Ex­cel­len­cy is or is not do­ing with the list of can­di­dates for the of­fice of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, which a top of­fi­cial of the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions De­part­ment has stat­ed on oath was in fact de­liv­ered to her,” he said.

PM, Pan­day, Sinanan re­spond

Prime Min­is­ter felt dif­fer­ent­ly.

“Did you see the phrase ‘if this is what hap­pened’?” the Prime Min­is­ter asked.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that Daly was en­gag­ing in spec­u­la­tion and hy­po­thet­i­cals.

“I speak for my­self and Mar­tin (Daly) speaks for him­self,” he said.

“The dif­fer­ence is that I am not spec­u­lat­ing or hy­poth­e­siz­ing,” he said.

Fel­low Se­nior Coun­sel Avory Sinanan agreed with Daly.

“I think he has en­cap­su­lat­ed the un­sat­is­fac­to­ry na­ture of the po­si­tion,” Sinanan said yes­ter­day.

He said that by side­step­ping di­rect ques­tions, the Prime Min­is­ter was just “avoid­ing the is­sue”.

“In terms of keep­ing the Pres­i­dent in­formed of the gen­er­al con­duct of Gov­ern­ment, I don’t think, on the as­sump­tion, that this ghost meet­ing took place, Sec­tion 81 in my view does not re­al­ly give him an es­cape,” he said.

Sinanan said that Sec­tion 81 does not con­tem­plate a tri­par­tite meet­ing be­tween the Pres­i­dent, the Prime Min­is­ter or Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial and the chair­man of an in­de­pen­dent Com­mis­sion, to dis­cuss the work of that Com­mis­sion.

“What Sec­tion 81 con­tem­plates is a gen­er­al dis­cus­sion and gen­er­al in­for­ma­tion to the Pres­i­dent,” he said.

“What I am say­ing is you can­not in­vest Sec­tion 81 with a du­ty to keep the Pres­i­dent in­formed with such mea­sure of elas­tic­i­ty that it would im­pact on the in­de­pen­dent Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and you can have a tri­par­tite meet­ing to deal with that,” he said.

Mean­while, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day de­scribed this is­sue as “pe­riph­er­al child play” when there were much big­ger is­sues at play.

He once again called for an over­haul of the present Con­sti­tu­tion, say­ing that on­ly that would fix these prob­lems.

“With­out that re­form, if it is not this is­sue, it will be some­thing else. To­tal re­form is the on­ly way to fix these prob­lems,” he said.