Fol­low­ing the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of Par­lia­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­fused to rate the per­for­mance of the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds and CoP Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, when asked by GML se­nior re­porter Da­reece Po­lo.

When GML se­nior re­porter Kay-Marie Fletch­er asked Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Hinds if he was pleased with Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s per­for­mance, he said it was not his place to grade the Com­mis­sion­er.

If we are to car­ry out the man­date of Her Ex­cel­len­cy, who asked Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to “fix crime first”, then we must have per­for­mance as­sess­ments on key play­ers.

I can un­der­stand when the PM said he doesn’t be­lieve in reshuf­fling min­is­ters un­nec­es­sar­i­ly, since, “the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple have a learn­ing curve be­fore they can start run­ning again”.

How­ev­er, I was sur­prised when Cab­i­net agreed to a year ex­ten­sion for CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher from May 15, 2023.

Not that she is not de­serv­ing, but Hansard would show that the PNM had ve­he­ment­ly op­posed a sim­i­lar ex­ten­sion to the then CoP Ken­ny Noor Mo­hammed by the Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion, when the Pub­lic Of­fi­cials Bill was de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate on Ju­ly 17, 1997.

Then op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said, “Do you re­al­ly be­lieve that any of­fi­cer, hav­ing reached close to the age of 60, as­pir­ing to be a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and who qual­i­fies to ap­ply for a three-year ex­ten­sion would want to lock up a min­is­ter for dri­ving on the shoul­der with­out in­sur­ance and a dri­ver’s per­mit; whether or not he might be for­tu­nate enough to have one, two, or three birth cer­tifi­cates? One has hang­ing over one’s head the fact that if one does not act and be at the Gov­ern­ment’s beck and call, the like­li­hood is that one might not get the ex­ten­sion of three years.”

Beck­les quot­ed an ar­ti­cle from the Dai­ly Ex­press of Ju­ly 14, 1997, writ­ten by Mr Kei­th Smith, cap­tioned, “Why not Guy?”

“How is Com­mis­sion­er Mo­hammed go­ing to re­late to near­ly Com­mis­sion­er Hilton Guy, with Guy grum­bling in his hu­man heart that the on­ly rea­son Mo­hammed is No 1 and he is No 2 is be­cause of what he is bound to per­ceive as po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age? And how is the Com­mis­sion­er go­ing to re­late to all the oth­er ‘top cops’ with all of them stew­ing, be­liev­ing as they will, that the Com­mis­sion­er is keep­ing them stuck in the same po­si­tion for the next three years and even if they tell them­selves, well, ‘when it comes to our turn to go they will keep us on for an­oth­er three years’, up will come Sa­tan to whis­per in their re­cep­tive ears, ‘Ah, but would you have a God­fa­ther in whichev­er gov­ern­ment when that time reach?’”

Even Sen­a­tor Dan­ny Mon­tano read the PSA’s Ju­ly 11, 1997, press re­lease—“Ex­ten­sion of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s Em­ploy­ment—A Wicked Act by Gov­ern­ment”.

He quot­ed, “From any an­gle, yes­ter­day’s de­ci­sion by Gov­ern­ment to ex­tend the term of em­ploy­ment of the present Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and to take leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment to give ef­fect to that de­ci­sion, stinks to the high heav­ens … Gen­er­al­ly, such ex­ten­sions are agreed to on­ly where the of­fi­cer pos­sess­es par­tic­u­lar skills which are not cur­rent­ly avail­able else­where in the ser­vice. The Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion vi­o­lates this long-stand­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prin­ci­ple and prac­tice in the pub­lic ser­vice.

The fact that the present regime seeks to ex­tend the em­ploy­ment of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to co­in­cide with the end of their own term of of­fice, al­so rais­es the spec­tre of the politi­ci­sa­tion of the po­lice ser­vice.

Will every new regime then ap­point se­nior po­lice and mil­i­tary of­fi­cers loy­al or per­ceived to be loy­al to the par­tic­u­lar gov­ern­ment? That is a recipe for a Ton­ton Ma­coute in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

This de­ci­sion is moral­ly wrong and flies in the face of our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic tra­di­tions and prac­tices, frag­ile as they are.

Cit­i­zens be­ware!

Two well-re­spect­ed mem­bers of the PNM, one who be­came Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate and the oth­er des­tined, as some say, to be the first fe­male leader of her par­ty, gave such sol­id ar­gu­ments.

I can un­der­stand Cab­i­net’s col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty can sti­fle an MP’s own morals and be­liefs, but the shift­ing of a par­ty’s stance de­pend­ing on which side of the aisle you sit on il­lus­trates the hypocrisy of our pol­i­tics.

Shi­mon Shetree’s book ‘Judges on Tri­al’, sug­gests the Ex­ec­u­tive can con­trol judges whose ser­vices they can ex­tend.

This covert con­trol should not be al­lowed to tar­nish any of­fice.

Hold­ers of any in­de­pen­dent of­fice should nev­er be com­pro­mised de­pend­ing on their con­tin­u­ing in of­fice by not call­ing out the short­com­ings of the ex­ec­u­tive.

It might, there­fore, be time our par­lia­men­tar­i­ans con­sid­er leg­is­la­tion to in­crease the re­tire­ment age of any fu­ture CoP to 63, rather than ac­cuse each oth­er of hav­ing a CoP at their ‘beck and call’.