Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has fired back at at­tor­ney Lar­ry Lal­la over a video Lal­la post­ed on his (Lal­la’s) Face­book page, which con­tained a clip from a news con­fer­ence in which Dr Row­ley had de­nied hav­ing “any­thing to do with the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Pres­i­dent and the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.”

The post fol­lows Dr Row­ley’s ad­mis­sion on Mon­day that it was he who met with the for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad, giv­ing her in­for­ma­tion that ul­ti­mate­ly led to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er mer­it list be­ing pulled back.

The brief clip from Oc­to­ber 16, 2021 has been shared nu­mer­ous times on so­cial me­dia.

In it, the PM, speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence, said he want­ed to “cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­ny that I had any­thing to do with the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Pres­i­dent and the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and any ac­tion of the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion in its re­la­tion­ship with the Pres­i­dent.”

The Prime Min­is­ter took to his pri­vate Face­book page to blast­Lal­la, who had shared the video with the com­ment “PM ah shame for yuh!!” with three emo­jis.

“When did I ever de­ny that I pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion by com­mu­ni­cat­ing with its Chair­man?” the PM asked.

“Check your facts! Ac­tu­al­ly, I went as far as to say that I see it as my du­ty so to do. I even went fur­ther and point­ed out that I am the on­ly Cab­i­net mem­ber re­quired to vis­it Pres­i­dent’s House in fur­ther­ance of du­ty and that I will share any per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion with any Ser­vice Com­mis­sion,” he said.

He clar­i­fied that what he had de­nied was the “vol­ume of hope­ful con­spir­a­cy spec­u­la­tions spawned by those who want­ed to en­joy a bac­cha­nal.”

“For ex­am­ple, I de­nied that I was in any meet­ing with the Chair­man and the Pres­i­dent, I de­nied that I had any con­ver­sa­tion or gave any in­struc­tions to any per­son about any mer­it list etc,” the PM said.

“These in­con­ve­nient facts must be very frus­trat­ing to the con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist who long for a “con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis” but are at pains to lo­cate this wish­list ex­cept lost in a mean­ing­less sea of “ifs,” the Prime Min­is­ter added.

He then sin­gled out Lal­la, whom he la­belled “(Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal) Mooni­lal’s lawyer.”

Attorney Larry Lalla

“Where does it say that I have not pro­vid­ed per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion to the Chair­man of the Com­mis­sion?” Row­ley asked.

“So you make it that by my pass­ing in­for­ma­tion to the PSC au­to­mat­i­cal­ly means that I was, in a meet­ing with those two of­fi­cers, Pres­i­dent and Chair­man?” he asked.

He al­so ques­tioned whether Lal­la meant that the Pres­i­dent must be in­volved “and is a par­ty to any­thing I did with the Chair­man?”

Row­ley went on to ques­tion whether Lal­la meant that he spoke with the chair­man about the PolSC mer­it list, ad­vised her to with­draw such a list, saw or was made to know what the mer­it list con­tained, or that he on­ly shared that per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion with the com­mis­sion in some con­nec­tion with the mer­it list.

“I should not be alarmed about the ex­plo­sive in­for­ma­tion em­a­nat­ing from the Firearms Dept. and even if I was alarmed that was not a good time to alert the PSC?” Row­ley asked.

“Well, you are free to have your spec­u­la­tions but feel no shame for me. The on­ly thing that com­forts me is that you are not my lawyer. Clear­ly in your world, facts and log­ic don’t mat­ter, what mat­ters is any fool­ish cause you choose to as­so­ciate with,” the PM end­ed.

In re­sponse to the di­rect state­ment from the Prime Min­is­ter, Lal­la said this was a very se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion that “re­flects ex­treme­ly neg­a­tive­ly and dis­turbing­ly on all three se­nior of­fice hold­ers of this coun­try.”

“And I will dare say it war­rants in­ter­ven­tion by the po­lice to de­ter­mine whether a charge­able case is made out for mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

“The PM, by his rev­e­la­tion that he is the per­son who met with the PolSC chair at Pres­i­dent’s House, leads to a rea­son­able in­fer­ence that the ac­tion of the PM and his in­ter­ac­tion with the PolSC chair caused the with­draw­al of the mer­it list,” Lal­la said.

Lal­la said “in­fer­ence” led to the “fur­ther in­fer­ence” that all three of­fice­hold­ers were par­tic­i­pants in an ef­fec­tive breach of the Con­sti­tu­tion, in­clud­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter in­volved him­self in the work­ing of the in­de­pen­dent PolSC, that the chair of the PolSC with­drew the mer­it list af­ter it had been sub­mit­ted to the Pres­i­dent, and that the Pres­i­dent al­lowed the list to be with­drawn af­ter it had been de­posit­ed with her.

“At all times, the prop­er course for the PM to adopt, if he had in­for­ma­tion that was damn­ing and point­ed to any can­di­date on the mer­it list be­ing un­fit for the of­fice of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, was to take the in­for­ma­tion to the House and present it to the Par­lia­ment dur­ing the de­bate on the name of any par­tic­u­lar can­di­date,” Lal­la said.

“What he is not per­mit­ted to do is to in­volve him­self in and to thwart the work­ing of the in­de­pen­dent Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.”

Lal­la said ac­cord­ing to the Con­sti­tu­tion, once the PolSC chair de­liv­ered the mer­it list to Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes, her of­fice is man­dat­ed to is­sue a no­ti­fi­ca­tion to Par­lia­ment with the names on that list.

“When that no­ti­fi­ca­tion goes to Par­lia­ment, ei­ther side can raise ob­jec­tions to any name on the mer­it list by pro­duc­ing the ev­i­dence on which their ob­jec­tion is based and the name will then be vot­ed on by the House,” Lal­la said.

“We now know from the press re­lease is­sued by the Pres­i­dent last year that the mer­it list was de­liv­ered to and ac­cept­ed by the Pres­i­dent but that the list was lat­er “with­drawn” by the chair of the PolSC.”

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS