In five days, the one-year ex­ten­sion grant­ed to Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to re­main this coun­try’s Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice will ex­pire. How­ev­er, de­spite the loom­ing dead­line, the Cab­i­net re­mains mum on whether they’ll grant a sec­ond ex­ten­sion.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher was ex­pect­ed to re­tire af­ter May 14, 2023—when she turned 60—but she was grant­ed an ex­ten­sion by the Cab­i­net un­der Sec­tion 75 of the Po­lice Ser­vice Act.

Un­der the Act, the Pres­i­dent has the pow­er to ex­tend the term of a first di­vi­sion of­fi­cer who is due to re­tire if it is in the na­tion­al in­ter­est. Po­lice of­fi­cers are fur­ther el­i­gi­ble for two ad­di­tion­al one-year ex­ten­sions based on their an­nu­al per­for­mance re­views. With Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s 61st birth­day to be cel­e­brat­ed next Tues­day, the ex­ten­sion will ex­pire on Wednes­day.

Asked at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing about the top CoP process and a pos­si­ble sec­ond ex­ten­sion, act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert had no up­date.

“I am un­able to an­swer that ques­tion at this point in time,” he said.

His re­sponse, came one day af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence that, “It would be pre­ma­ture for me to speak to some­thing that Cab­i­net has to con­sid­er. I do not wish to be pre­ma­ture.”

When pressed fur­ther on Wednes­day, Ar­mour said he was not at lib­er­ty to di­vulge what Cab­i­net had dis­cussed and when a de­ci­sion was made it would be­come gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.

It’s im­por­tant to note that an act­ing com­mis­sion­er of po­lice can on­ly be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent once Par­lia­ment ap­proves the nom­i­nee.

Nev­er­the­less, the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) is con­tin­u­ing its search for a sub­stan­tive com­mis­sion­er hav­ing ad­ver­tised the po­si­tion on April 11.

A source at the PolSC con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that they are yet to re­ceive a list of po­ten­tial can­di­dates al­though the win­dow for ap­pli­ca­tions ex­pired at 4 pm on May 3.

The source ex­plained that the in­for­ma­tion goes to the sec­re­tari­at who per­forms a pre­lim­i­nary screen­ing of ap­pli­ca­tions by fact-check­ing the in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed be­fore the process can move for­ward.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew on April 22, at­tor­ney and for­mer PolSC mem­ber Mar­tin George de­scribed the process to ap­point a CoP in Trinidad and To­ba­go as “un­nec­es­sary” and “cum­ber­some”.

His com­ment fol­lowed the Op­po­si­tion’s re­jec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill on April 19, which sought to al­low the PolSC to ap­point act­ing com­mis­sion­ers with­out the ap­proval of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.