News desk

Scores on the mer­it list for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er done by the pre­vi­ous Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion showed for­mer Com­mis­sion­er Gary Griffth top­ping the list with a 94.8 per cent rat­ing.

The list, which Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a copy of, re­sult­ed from the se­lec­tion process for a Com­mis­sion­er done by the pre­vi­ous PSC head­ed by then-chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad over June-Au­gust. Around Au­gust 12, for­mer chair­man Seep­er­sad took the mer­it list of sev­en nom­i­nees to Pres­i­dent’s House, St Ann’s, but sub­se­quent­ly with­drew it. That com­mis­sion even­tu­al­ly col­lapsed in Sep­tem­ber over dis­agree­ment on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave for then act­ing CoP Grif­fith.

A new PSC was ap­point­ed last month. Fol­low­ing a re­cent court judge­ment that deemed the act­ing ap­point­ment null and void, and al­so the 2009 or­der for act­ing ap­point­ments for a CoP and deputy com­mis­sion­er, the Gov­ern­ment was oblig­ed to do new process­es for se­lec­tion. Gov­ern­ment last week ap­proved a new Le­gal No­tice (277) for the se­lec­tion of a CoP and deputy, ad­just­ing cri­te­ria.

The no­tice, plus amend­ment (Le­gal No­tice 278) ad­just­ing the 277 no­tice fur­ther, was laid in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day. It doesn’t re­quire Par­lia­ment de­bate. The Op­po­si­tion, which is against the new process, wants a mo­tion for de­bate against it. But a sim­i­lar mo­tion on the process used this year was de­feat­ed re­cent­ly. Word’s now await­ed on when the PSC will be­gin a new re­cruit­ment process.

In the Seep­er­sad PSC mer­it list, nom­i­nees apart from Grif­fith were an as­sis­tant CoP, a deputy CoP, a for­mer of­fi­cer, two cur­rent TTPS of­fi­cers and a De­fence Force of­fi­cer.

The clos­est oth­er scores to Grif­fith’s 94.8 per cent were 77 per cent (ACP) and 74 per cent (DCP). Grif­fith al­so topped the fi­nal in­ter­view scor­ing by the four for­mer PSC mem­bers with 91, 85, 85 and 84.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said whether he placed first or last is now ir­rel­e­vant, “But if Gov­er­ment want­ed to re­ject any can­di­date, it should have been done the prop­er way via Par­lia­ment, not draft a le­gal or­der to scrap it be­cause of cow­ardice be­cause of be­ing con­cerned of po­lit­i­cal reper­cus­sions.”

Cit­ing T&T Po­lice Ser­vice im­prove­ments, his top­ping the list, pop­u­lar­i­ty rat­ing and pos­i­tive as­sess­ments, he added, “They knew it was po­lit­i­cal sui­cide for them to go to Par­lia­ment to say that they were re­ject­ing some­one who most of the coun­try want­ed, and say they were re­ject­ing him be­cause he may have be­come more pop­u­lar than the Gov­ern­ment, or try to use lies as an ex­cuse to re­ject him, as they tried in a failed char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion cam­paign for the last few months, so in­stead, they de­cid­ed to take away the au­thor­i­ty from the present PSC to de­cide if to bring the present Mer­it List for­ward by legal­ly abus­ing their au­thor­i­ty and scrap the Mer­it List.”

Grif­fith said if he reap­plied he’d top the list again.

“Would they keep draft­ing Le­gal No­tices to keep scrap­ping the list un­til I stop ap­ply­ing?”