Negative message from PSC debate

The Editor: It seems to me that the Government missed the opportunity to call the UNC a bluff during the recent debate on the Bills to replace the present PSC. The essence of the UNC’s objection to the Bills, as I was able to glean, seemed to be their fear of the autocratic or totalitarian tendencies of Manning and the decisive weight of his input in selecting the President and other key players in the new arrangements proposed. The PNM would have lost nothing in granting Panday the authority to appoint the Police Commissioner while retaining the power of veto or, even vice versa. It would also have helped, in either instance, to have any intervention by veto supported by publicly stated reasons.

I am assuming in all of this that any Commissioner so appointed would have been given the power and authority to manage the Police Service by way of acceptable and established management practices and procedures (not that “mish mash” we have now or those being proposed). If it was decided that the Police Commissioner should be appointed by a Committee, then granting Panday the right to appoint half or some of the members of this Committee would also have gone a long way towards invalidating the objections of Panday and the UNC. Any or all of these measures could have been agreed subject to review, and/or even monitoring, over a stated period of time, by a Committee made up of Senators or members (from Parliament and/or the private sector) appointed by both Leaders. They would have also responded to the concerns of Panday and the UNC, gotten Manning off the hook with regard to ultimately carrying the responsibility for dealing with the crime situation and ensured that citizens enjoy greater security and protection against criminal elements at all levels of the society.

There are of course several other benefits, primarily that Panday’s already diminished stocks would have weighed heavily against him in the court of public opinion if such a compromise was offered by Manning and refused, and of course Manning’s stocks would have also risen. As it is, after millions of dollars, thousands of wasted man hours, endless robber talk and gallerying, and the best efforts of all our elected representatives, Parliament has failed to agree on what, were it not for the politics, is really quite a simple system for managing the Police Service. Given the acknowledgement that the Police Service is in crisis and reform in this area is just one of the several things necessary to deal with the proliferation of crime, the message in all of this is one for citizens to be dreadfully concerned about.

Eugene A Reynald
Port-of-Spain