Renu­ka Singh

The Pres­i­dent can­not be al­lowed to re­main silent on what tran­spired at her of­fice be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and the for­mer head of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion that led to the with­draw­al of a Mer­it List that was al­ready sub­mit­ted.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is call­ing for the Pres­i­dent to break her si­lence on this mat­ter and is re­it­er­at­ing its call for the Prime Min­is­ter to ex­plain his meet­ing with for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair Bliss Seep­er­sad.

The Op­po­si­tion has now added to its pre­vi­ous calls and is now de­mand­ing that for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi re­signs from his new post.

Both calls stem from news­pa­per re­ports over the past few days in which Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­firmed that he met with Seep­er­sad and gave her in­for­ma­tion per­ti­nent to the PolSC’s Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mer­it List.

Speak­ing un­der the ban­ner, “How Kei­th Row­ley dis­man­tled the Po­lice Ser­vice,” MP for Ch­agua­nas West Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly and San Juan/Barataria MP Sad­dam Ho­sein again ac­cused the PM of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

Ho­sein read the Pres­i­dent’s first and on­ly state­ment on the mat­ter, which said that the Mer­it List was hand­ed in and with­drawn im­me­di­ate­ly.

“No­body knew who that pub­lic of­fi­cial was. In fact, the Pres­i­dent in her state­ment said that it was none of our busi­ness for her to dis­close who meets with her,” Ho­sein said.

“It was af­ter the Paria in­ci­dent, the Prime Min­is­ter so des­per­ate­ly look­ing for a dis­trac­tion, dis­closed that he was the “high-rank­ing” pub­lic of­fi­cial who met with Ms Bliss Seep­er­sad that day at the Pres­i­dent’s House. Now, what does that mean?” Ho­sein asked.

He said that even though the PM pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion about Grif­fith which called the Mer­it List to be with­drawn, he was still nom­i­nat­ed to be act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice by the same PolSC.

“So one now has to ask the ques­tion, how did the Prime Min­is­ter know that Ms Bliss Seep­er­sad was about to de­liv­er the list to the Pres­i­dent? Did the Prime Min­is­ter have knowl­edge be­fore­hand that Mr Gary Grif­fith was on top of that list or did the Prime Min­is­ter get that in­for­ma­tion af­ter the list was sub­mit­ted to Her Ex­cel­len­cy and there­after met with Bliss Seep­er­sad,” Ho­sein asked.

Ho­sein al­lud­ed to pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and the PolSC. Ho­sein said that press re­leas­es are not an­swer­ing these ques­tions and called for the po­lice to get in­volved to in­ves­ti­gate and the mat­ter should be brought be­fore the court.

On the mat­ter of Al-Rawi, Ho­sein cit­ed an ar­ti­cle that re­port­ed the for­mer AG wrote to the Chief Jus­tice to get his right-hand lawyer sus­pend­ed for in­sub­or­di­na­tion.

Ho­sein said that Al-Rawi at­tempt­ed to get his Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel just be­fore he was re­moved from of­fice.

Ram­bal­ly said that the PM said he passed on some “per­ti­nent” in­for­ma­tion to Seep­er­sad and said that while some peo­ple did not see any­thing wrong with that, there were far-reach­ing con­se­quences.

“Well, every­thing is wrong with this. That might be the sur­face pic­ture but what lurks be­neath is a fes­ter­ing wound that has the po­ten­tial to in­flict se­vere dam­age to our democ­ra­cy,” he said.

Ram­bal­ly echoed pre­vi­ous UNC crit­ics and said that the Prime Min­is­ter could have wait­ed un­til the Mer­it List was brought to Par­lia­ment for de­bate and made his po­si­tion on then CoP Gary Grif­fith clear.

“By his own ad­mis­sion, Dr Row­ley has said he has had prob­lems with Gary Grif­fith,” Ram­bal­ly, adding that ac­cord­ing to Grif­fith, that prob­lem was that he (Grif­fith) did not take in­struc­tions from the PM to hire for­eign lawyers to make a case against mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion.

“Is that not high-rank­ing, self-serv­ing, po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy on the part of the Prime Min­is­ter?” Ram­bal­ly asked.

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