Renu­ka Singh

At­tor­ney Gre­go­ry Delzin yes­ter­day agreed with for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj that a de­bate was not al­lowed at the Elec­toral Col­lege stage of the failed at­tempt to re­move Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes by the Op­po­si­tion last Thurs­day.

Delzin made the com­ment as a guest on CNC3’s spe­cial, “The Im­peach­ment Saga, What’s Next,” which aired last night, say­ing it was clear to him that a de­bate was not con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly al­lowed.

“The way that Sec­tion 36 is struc­tured, the de­ci­sion by Par­la­ment by a one-third ma­jor­i­ty vote is to sim­ply send it to the Elec­toral Col­lege for a de­ci­sion. There is noth­ing in the Con­sti­tu­tion, in my view, that per­mits a de­bate at this stage,” Delzin said.

“One of the things you have to recog­nise is that on­ly a one-third vote is need­ed, it is not even a process that calls for a ma­jor­i­ty vote, so, there­fore, what is the pur­pose of de­bate in a cir­cum­stance like that?” he asked.

He said the one-third vote was on­ly to de­ter­mine whether the mat­ter need­ed to go to the Elec­toral Col­lege.

“The oth­er point that needs to be made is that it is the Elec­toral Col­lege that de­cides whether it should go to the tri­bunal, it is not Par­lia­ment, it is not the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, it is not the Sen­ate. There­fore, the Stand­ing Or­ders do not nec­es­sar­i­ly ap­ply,” he said.

Delzin said the Stand­ing Or­ders are al­so pref­aced by the words “ex­cept by the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

“Stand­ing Or­ders, and I agree with Mr (Ramesh Lawrence) Ma­haraj, is a sub­sidiary sub­ject to the Con­sti­tu­tion, and un­less there are clear words on Sec­tion 36 that de­mand a de­bate, its dis­cus­sion at the stage, the Speak­er does not have the room to add or in­ter­pret the Con­sti­tu­tion in a man­ner that takes it out­side the in­tent of Sec­tion 32,” Delzin said.

Sec­tion 32 deals with the amend­ments to mo­tions.

Delzin said that the ar­gu­ment that the House al­so reg­u­lates its own op­er­a­tions does not ap­ply in this case.

For­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair and for­mer Speak­er of the House, Nizam Mo­hammed, al­so agreed with both Delzin and Ma­haraj.

He spoke briefly about the next op­tions for the se­lec­tion of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

“This en­tire con­fu­sion start­ed with the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and I think it end­ed with the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion when all the mem­bers re­signed and we were left with­out a Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion,” Mo­hammed said.

“I be­lieve that the next step is that we are run­ning late in the es­tab­lish­ment of a new Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion,” he said.

Mo­hammed said that with the dif­fer­ing views and con­tin­ued dis­cus­sions, he hopes that the “pow­ers that be would have been a bit more dili­gent in hav­ing a func­tion­al, or rather a func­tion­ing Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion by now.”

“As a re­sult of the mass res­ig­na­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, we are now left with a Po­lice Ser­vice with­out its prop­er struc­ture and that, to my mind, is a very very se­ri­ous and a very wor­ry­ing sit­u­a­tion,” Mo­hammed said.

He said “cer­tain de­vel­op­ments” tak­ing place with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice were al­so cause for con­cern.

“We need the in­sti­tu­tions in place and prop­er­ly staffed and prop­er­ly equipped to en­sure that we fol­low the pro­ce­dures this time and we do not re­peat the mis­takes that were made in the past,” Mo­hammed said.

“To me, that is ex­treme­ly crit­i­cal at this stage.”

The for­mer PSC had a mer­it list of in­di­vid­u­als qual­i­fied to be in­stalled as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice but it was with­drawn af­ter an al­leged meet­ing with a Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial on Au­gust 12 at Pres­i­dent’s House.

Mo­hammed said the new PSC should be al­lowed to do their own work.