Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s pub­lic pledge to ur­gent­ly re­view leg­is­la­tion re­lat­ed to the ap­point­ment of a po­lice com­mis­sion­er has been de­scribed as a long-await­ed break­through by for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair­man, Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, De­osaran said the cur­rent PSC sys­tem has “re­peat­ed­ly failed in its con­sti­tu­tion­al mis­sion.” 

He warned that if de­ci­sive ac­tion was not tak­en, the ap­point­ment of a po­lice com­mis­sion­er and deputy com­mis­sion­ers would con­tin­ue to be an ex­pense to tax­pay­ers.

Crit­i­ciz­ing the struc­ture of the PSC, De­osaran said it has long been a body that “pre­tends to be po­lit­i­cal­ly in­de­pen­dent while in fact it is mere­ly a po­lit­i­cal in­stru­ment.”

“Politi­cians in Par­lia­ment have the last say, where the PSC’s first-ranked can­di­date could be turned in­to fourth place and vice ver­sa, as the coun­try has wit­nessed.”

Ac­cord­ing to De­osaran, the sit­u­a­tion stems from a 2006 joint de­ci­sion by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress to es­tab­lish the cur­rent PSC frame­work.

“The ma­jor aim was to re­move the prime min­is­ter’s ve­to. But it turned out to be the vir­tu­al op­po­site — the prime min­is­ter, through his or her par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty, ef­fec­tive­ly se­lects the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice and the three deputies,” De­osaran said.

He lament­ed that de­spite years of in­ef­fi­cien­cy, in­ef­fec­tive­ness, fi­nan­cial waste, and lit­i­ga­tion sur­round­ing the PSC, no se­ri­ous at­tempt had been made by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments to cor­rect or abol­ish the sys­tem.

“PM Young’s de­ci­sion not on­ly sig­nals a con­sti­tu­tion­al break­through, but it may very well be a vote-catch­ing pol­i­cy,” he said.

And for­mer com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith agreed that the cur­rent process is flawed say­ing Young’s promise to bring change was wel­comed.

“This is long over­due,” Grif­fith said. “In 2007, when Man­ning and Pan­day de­cid­ed to have the whole sys­tem re­vamped, it be­came po­lit­i­cal.

“Nowhere else in the world has there been a sys­tem so com­pli­cat­ed to ap­point a po­lice com­mis­sion­er. You spend over a year to go through the process, and then they get a three-year con­tract. It is cum­ber­some.”

Grif­fith said that be­fore 2007, in­de­pen­dent ex­perts man­aged the se­lec­tion process.

“When the process was changed, there was some de­gree of in­ter­fer­ence, and civil­ians with no ex­pe­ri­ence in law en­force­ment made bad de­ci­sions,” he claimed.

Grif­fith said the cur­rent sys­tem gives too much weight to in­ter­views, while he said, there were flaws in the eval­u­a­tion process.

“There are 75 things you are test­ed on. Even in 2018 when I was se­lect­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts, peo­ple who didn’t want me used po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence. They ig­nored what the ex­perts rec­om­mend­ed and placed in­di­vid­u­als who didn’t even ap­ply for the po­si­tion,” Grif­fith said.

Mean­while, Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin al­so wel­comed and called for re­forms.

“The sys­tem must re­move po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence,” Dot­tin said. “It must be about mer­it and the abil­i­ty to lead. We can­not al­low po­lit­i­cal agen­das to shape law en­force­ment.”

Dot­tin said col­lab­o­ra­tion among gov­ern­ment, civ­il so­ci­ety, and in­de­pen­dent ex­perts is need­ed to re­store trust.

On Sat­ur­day, at the Ex­o­dus Pan The­atre in Tu­na­puna, Young an­nounced plans to amend the leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing the ap­point­ment of the po­lice com­mis­sion­er as an im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty for his ad­min­is­tra­tion. He said strate­gic and sta­ble lead­er­ship was need­ed with­in the po­lice ser­vice.