At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan is not about to apol­o­gise for state­ments he made against act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert last Thurs­day. Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Dr Kei­th Row­ley was the first to is­sue a pub­lic call for an apol­o­gy from Ram­lo­gan hours af­ter Ram­lo­gan said Philbert should take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the loot­ing tak­ing place at the site of the aban­doned Light­house of the Lord Je­sus Christ Church at the Heights of Gua­napo, Ari­ma. The church is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and Ram­lo­gan said valu­able ev­i­dence may have been lost as a re­sult of the loot­ing.

He had said Philbert must give an ad­e­quate ex­pla­na­tion for his fail­ure to se­cure the fa­cil­i­ty and fail­ing to do so would re­sult in the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion tak­ing the re­quired ac­tion. Ram­lo­gan said the ex­pi­ra­tion of Philbert's act­ing ap­point­ment could be "ac­cel­er­at­ed" by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. Philbert in re­sponse ac­cused the AG of dis­play­ing "con­tempt, dis­dain, bias and an­i­mos­i­ty for the of­fice of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice."

But de­spite the in­creas­ing calls for Ram­lo­gan's apol­o­gy, the min­is­ter in a four-line re­sponse said he was "hap­py that the law en­force­ment agen­cies have (now) re­spond­ed to the chal­lenge posed by the pub­lic loot­ing at the church and have re­stored calm, law and or­der. "There is there­fore no need for an apol­o­gy," he added. Ram­lo­gan said he main­tained the opin­ion "pub­lic of­fi­cials must be held ac­count­able. We can­not ex­pect dif­fer­ent re­sults if we con­tin­ue do­ing things the same way." He in­sist­ed: "Fail­ure to per­form should re­sult in a let­ter of warn­ing, dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion and ter­mi­na­tion by the rel­e­vant and com­pe­tent au­thor­i­ties." (RL)