A new Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) is ex­pect­ed to be ce­ment­ed next week.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley who is sched­uled to re­turn from Scot­land on Sat­ur­day, will pi­lot a de­bate next Wednes­day in Par­lia­ment to ap­prove the new five-mem­ber Com­mis­sion.

This was con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day by Leader of Gov­ern­ment in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Camille Robin­son-Reg­is.

The Prime Min­is­ter, Robin­son- Reg­is and a Trinidad and To­ba­go team are in Scot­land for the Unit­ed Na­tions’ cli­mate change con­fer­ence. The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) last week in­di­cat­ed Row­ley re­turns on Sat­ur­day.

Pri­or to leav­ing Robin­son-Reg­is had told Guardian Me­dia that all five names would be done to­geth­er in Par­lia­ment.

Yes­ter­day Robin­son- Reg­is added the no­ti­fi­ca­tions can be ap­proved by a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty - which means the Gov­ern­ment does not re­quire Op­po­si­tion sup­port for pas­sage.

The pre­vi­ous Com­mis­sion col­lapsed on Sep­tem­ber 25.

This fol­low­ing a dis­agree­ment by the three Com­mis­sion­ers- Court­ney Mc­Nish, Su­san Craig-James and Roger Kawals­ingh - with then PSC chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad. The is­sues pri­mar­i­ly in­clud­ed pro­ce­dures for ad­min­is­tra­tive leave for for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and a lack of con­sul­ta­tion on this.

Mc­Nish was the first to go and re­signed on Sep­tem­ber 21.

The PSC which re­quired three mem­bers for a quo­rum, col­lapsed when Craig-James re­signed on Sep­tem­ber 25.

Kawals­ingh fol­lowed, re­sign­ing on Sep­tem­ber 27 and Seep­er­sad on Sep­tem­ber 30.

Since then there has been no PSC and the se­lec­tion and ap­point­ment of a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is pend­ing af­ter Grif­fith’s con­tract end­ed on Au­gust 17.

Deputy CoP Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob had been act­ing CoP af­ter Grif­fith went on leave vol­un­tar­i­ly. But Ja­cob’s act­ing stint end­ed Oc­to­ber 15 when Grif­fith was ex­pect­ed to re­turn.

How­ev­er, a court rul­ing in a mat­ter brought by ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj deemed the act­ing ap­point­ments il­le­gal. That im­pact­ed the ap­point­ment of Grif­fith and Ja­cob to act fur­ther, leav­ing the TTPS with­out an act­ing head. Ja­cob, in his sub­stan­tive post as DCP, is cur­rent­ly the Po­lice Ser­vice’s ac­count­ing of­fi­cer. The gov­ern­ment has ap­pealed as­pects of the rul­ing.

Af­ter the res­ig­na­tions, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent im­me­di­ate­ly sought nom­i­nees for the PSC.

Fol­low­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-man­dat­ed con­sul­ta­tion with Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the Pres­i­dent com­plet­ed no­ti­fi­ca­tions for five nom­i­nees: re­tired Jus­tice of Ap­peal Ju­dith Jones, fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant Max­ine At­tong, se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Ian Ramd­hanie, wealth man­age­ment ex­pert Max­ine King and at­tor­ney at law Ra­jiv Per­sad.

The con­sti­tu­tion man­dat­ed that the Pres­i­dent se­lect peo­ple “who are qual­i­fied and ex­pe­ri­enced in the dis­ci­plines of law, fi­nance, so­ci­ol­o­gy or man­age­ment” as mem­bers of the Com­mis­sion.

The no­ti­fi­ca­tions were sent to Par­lia­ment over the last few weeks. The fi­nal one, for Per­sad, was sub­mit­ted last week.

These will now be de­bat­ed at Wednes­day’s sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Ac­cord­ing to the Par­lia­ment’s agen­da for that day, Speak­er of the House Bridgid An­nisette-George will present the five no­ti­fi­ca­tions for Jones, At­tong, Ramd­hanie, King and Per­sad.

Row­ley will pi­lot de­bate on a mo­tion to ap­prove the no­ti­fi­ca­tions. The Op­po­si­tion- which will cau­cus on its plans for de­bate will re­ply. Apart from Per­sad- Bisses­sar there are like­ly to be sev­er­al oth­er Op­po­si­tion speak­ers.

Op­po­si­tion still dis­ap­proves of Pres­i­dent’s picks

De­spite con­sul­ta­tion with the Pres­i­dent, Per­sad- Bisses­sar last week stat­ed the Pres­i­dent’s picks were all “taint­ed” un­til all ques­tions posed to the Pres­i­dent re­gard­ing is­sues con­cern­ing the se­lec­tion of a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice are an­swered.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Pres­i­dent “lacked moral au­thor­i­ty” to make any nom­i­na­tions for the Com­mis­sion since her of­fice was “mired in con­tro­ver­sy” on that.

But for­mer PSC mem­ber Mar­tin George said the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s fail­ure or re­fusal to re­spond to the Pres­i­dent’s no­ti­fi­ca­tions of the five pro­posed nom­i­nees is im­ma­te­r­i­al as the Pres­i­dent would have ful­filled her con­sti­tu­tion­al du­ty to “con­sult” mere­ly by invit­ing the re­spons­es from both Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader.

The Op­po­si­tion want­ed the Pres­i­dent to iden­ti­fy a “pub­lic of­fi­cial” who was al­leged­ly at Pres­i­dent’s House on Au­gust 12 when the mer­it list for CoP was pre­sent­ed by Seep­er­sad to the Pres­i­dent. The list how­ev­er was im­me­di­ate­ly with­drawn, Pres­i­dent’s House con­firmed in an Oc­to­ber 17 state­ment which dealt with ques­tions sur­round­ing the Pres­i­dent’s role in the PSC/CoP mat­ter.

The Op­po­si­tion be­lieves the “of­fi­cial” in­flu­enced the with­draw­al of the list by Seep­er­sad and had called on Row­ley to say if it was him. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds sub­se­quent­ly said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil had passed to the PSC in­for­ma­tion the coun­cil “couldn’t have ig­nored.’’

The Op­po­si­tion’s Oc­to­ber 21 mo­tion to im­peach the Pres­i­dent on the PSC mat­ter, was de­feat­ed by a com­bined vote of Gov­ern­ment mem­bers and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

Yes­ter­day Op­po­si­tion MP Sad­dam Ho­sein un­der­scored Per­sad- Bisses­sar’s com­ments, “We stand by the leader’s po­si­tion that al­though nom­i­nees are good cit­i­zens, the fact is what’s done un­der the Pres­i­dent’s hand will be taint­ed.”

The Op­po­si­tion is ex­pect­ed to elab­o­rate on its po­si­tion at its up­com­ing news con­fer­ence and Mon­day Night Fo­rum.

There was no in­di­ca­tion yes­ter­day as to whether or not mem­bers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress would walk out of Wednes­day’s de­bate or ab­stain from vot­ing.