KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) chair­man, Prof Ramesh De­osaran, says Par­lia­ment should re­turn to the 2006 mod­el al­low­ing it to ap­point a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP), while the prime min­is­ter re­tains ve­to pow­er.

Speak­ing on the is­sue yes­ter­day, De­osaran agreed with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that the cur­rent sys­tem did not lend it­self to cre­at­ing best prac­tices. De­osaran de­scribed it as the “worst sys­tem in the world, not­ing it was con­vo­lut­ed, ex­pen­sive, caused con­fu­sion and was a lengthy process which could be de­layed.”

He said even Row­ley agreed the sys­tem was a mis­take. There­fore, he called for brav­ery in Par­lia­ment to give Row­ley the au­thor­i­ty he de­served as Prime Min­is­ter, with the Pres­i­dent con­trol­ling the for­ma­tion of the PolSC.

“Right now, the Gov­ern­ment and the Prime Min­is­ter are be­ing held ac­count­able for what the com­mis­sion­er is do­ing, and they are not the ones who ex­clu­sive­ly ap­point­ed her,” De­osaran said.

De­osaran said T&T has the same is­sue as in 2006 but with more ex­pense and rig­ma­role. He said the pur­pose of es­tab­lish­ing the PolSC was to re­move the prime min­is­ter’s ve­to pow­er in the ap­point­ments of CoPs and deputy com­mis­sion­ers. He said Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion un­der­took this pol­i­cy de­ci­sion.

He pro­posed that the PolSC should do the in­ter­views and as­sess­ments, make the ap­point­ment, and let the prime min­is­ter have the fi­nal say.

“I think the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion should be brave enough to ad­mit, PNM and UNC, that they made a mis­take in us­ing a big ham­mer to kill a sand­fly as it ap­pears now,” he said.

De­osaran al­so agreed with then-act­ing prime min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who said if Cab­i­net had not re­turned Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher as CoP, the Gov­ern­ment would have had to wait un­til the end of the year to get a sub­stan­tive ap­point­ment.

Mean­while, for­mer PolSC com­mis­sion­er Mar­tin George be­lieves the ap­point­ment process is too cum­ber­some and com­plex, say­ing it was eas­i­er to ap­point a chief jus­tice, at­tor­ney gen­er­al, and prime min­is­ter than a CoP. George said there were too many steps, in­clud­ing some out of the PolSC’s con­trol, so there is a need for ur­gent and rad­i­cal re­form of the pro­ce­dure and leg­is­la­tion.

George said dur­ing his time at the PolSC, it did an ex­ten­sive analy­sis of its roles and func­tions and made sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions, in­clud­ing the ap­point­ment of a per­ma­nent, full-time PolSC to car­ry out as­sess­ments and in­ves­ti­ga­tions. He said this doc­u­ment is with the PolSC and sug­gest­ed the Cab­i­net use it to guide the way for­ward.

Dur­ing last Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Im­bert said the PolSC as­sessed Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s per­for­mance and rat­ed her “good”.

But George said it was not enough for Gov­ern­ment to tell the pub­lic that, and called on the PolSC to pub­lish the as­sess­ment.

“It is re­al­ly a slap in the face of the pub­lic if the PolSC con­tin­ues to be silent on this is­sue, and I call them out to­day. I call them out right this minute to ac­count to the pub­lic and pro­duce those re­sults. Pro­duce the analy­sis. Pro­duce the state­ments where­by you would have done your as­sess­ment of the com­mis­sion­er,” George said.

He said the PolSC wouid lose cred­i­bil­i­ty if it failed to de­liv­er, as it should not act in se­cre­cy and whis­per to gov­ern­ment min­is­ters. If it con­tin­ues like this, he said the com­mis­sion­ers should re­sign.