GEISHA ALON­ZO

For­mer Pub­lic Ser­vice head Regi­nald Du­mas is adding his voice to those ques­tion­ing whether the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion was prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed in the first in­stance when it went through the process which led to the rec­om­men­da­tion of DCP De­o­dat Du­lalchan for the po­lice com­mis­sion­er’s post.

Speak­ing on the is­sue yes­ter­day, even as the Prime Min­is­ter has set up a to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter, Du­mas said the queries over there was in fact a quo­rum when the de­ci­sion was tak­en were valid and if in­deed the com­mis­sion was not legal­ly con­sti­tut­ed, then the en­tire process must be quashed.

“I don’t know if there was a quo­rum. Ac­cord­ing to the Con­sti­tu­tion a ser­vice com­mis­sion...whether it is po­lice or pub­lic or teach­ing...has a mem­ber­ship of five peo­ple.

“A quo­rum, again ac­cord­ing to the Con­sti­tu­tion, of those five peo­ple is three peo­ple. The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion has not had five mem­bers to since Feb­ru­ary last year... for an en­tire year. There­fore that the ques­tion aris­es was for the last year was the Com­mis­sion prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed,” Du­mas said.

He said this was a le­gal ques­tion which at­tor­neys will have to bat­tle out.

“How­ev­er, if the com­mis­sion was not prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed, then it would ap­pear that the de­ci­sions, rec­om­men­da­tions made by that im­prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed com­mis­sion, would be null and void, in­clud­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions of Du­lalchan and Phillip.

“That is a le­gal ques­tion and that is where one has to start on this par­tic­u­lar mat­ter. When that is an­swered we will see what hap­pens,” Du­mas said.

Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Harold Phillip was al­so se­lect­ed to fill the va­can­cy of top cop dur­ing the process.

How­ev­er, Du­mas again for the cur­rent se­lec­tion process to be scraped, say­ing it has re­sult­ed in “no end of the trou­ble” while the coun­try still does not have a po­lice com­mis­sion­er.

“All we have is ex­ten­sions for Stephen Williams. I can’t imag­ine how poor Williams feels hav­ing been ex­tend­ed so many times and I gath­er he’s com­ing up to re­tire­ment, so he might as well re­tire with­out hav­ing the priv­i­lege of hav­ing be­com­ing com­mis­sion­er,” Du­mas said.

He said the sys­tem was cum­ber­some and must be changed. But what it must be changed to was an­oth­er is­sue.

“We know what it was changed from...whether we go back to that sys­tem or whether we have a new sys­tem al­to­geth­er I don’t know. That is some­thing I would want the pop­u­la­tion to have a view on as to how this can be done. But what is cer­tain is that the cur­rent sys­tem is con­vert­ed and has on­ly brought con­fu­sion,” Du­mas said

Last Fri­day, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley agreed that a Spe­cial Se­lect Com­mit­tee be es­tab­lished to re­view the ap­point­ments.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment, Row­ley said the de­ci­sion was tak­en as a re­sult of ‘dis­qui­et’ and ques­tions raised by the pub­lic over the nom­i­na­tion Du­lalchan amid al­le­ga­tions of land grab­bing. Du­lalchan was said to have been named in con­nec­tion with in­ci­dents re­quir­ing dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion un­der the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) in re­cent weeks. The com­mit­tee is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er a re­port by March 31.

On whether any good would come out of the com­mit­tee probe, Du­mas said, “We will have to see. One ques­tion that may arise is does Par­lia­ment or any Par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee have the con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­i­ty to de­mand or re­quest from an in­de­pen­dent com­mis­sion like the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion in­for­ma­tion of its pro­ce­dures...I don’t know.

“That again is a le­gal mat­ter. If the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion is an in­de­pen­dent com­mis­sion, can any­body Par­lia­ment or any­one else say, ‘I want to know how you con­duct your work.’

“Can they be sum­moned? Can they sub­poe­naed. I don’t know. These are le­gal is­sues which must be dis­cussed and de­cid­ed up­on oth­er wise we can have even more con­fu­sion.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, for­mer PSC head Christo­pher Thomas agreed the process was “mis­han­dled” and called for a re­view.

On how the coun­try could move for­ward in the se­lec­tion of a po­lice com­mis­sion­er, Thomas said, “We are in a very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion and I un­der­stand we have to com­bat crime and im­prove the sit­u­a­tion. How we do that will de­pend on the kind of com­mis­sion­er we get and the process through which we get one.”

He said the Spe­cial Se­lect Com­mit­tee was a start in the right di­rec­tion to de­ter­mine what went wrong and how to chart a way for­ward.