Law and law officers

Jul 22, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I can distinctly remember there was a short letter in the press by the DPP, Mrs. Shalimar Ali-Hack in relation to my call that she should publicly state if she wrote high police authorities complaining about the officials responsible for the search of her suitcase at the airport.

She was evasive in that short missive. Now it has come to light that the DPP did in fact ask for disciplinary action by Commissioner Henry Greene against the police official that had her luggage sniffed by the police dog.

This revelation in the Full Court has gone uncommented so far and it came after the Full Court reprimanded the DPP for writing published letters in the media commenting on legal details that were sub judice at the time.

This country is macabre and bizarre. This writer is not an attorney nor is the editor of this newspaper yet for decades now, as media practitioners we know that the media cannot print or broadcast commentary on affairs before the judiciary.

Mrs. Hack is an officer of the law; she had to know that. But nevertheless she went ahead. It is now in the public domain that she was rebuked by the Full Court for such an unbecoming attitude.

This is the land of the bizarre and the macabre. One month after the Full Court castigated the DPP for not adhering to the sub judice convention, the Attorney-General has filed court proceeding of contempt against Mr. Paul Slowe for comments he made on the dismissal of police officer Mc Bean. The AG contends that since Mr. Mc Bean resorted to court action, Mr. Slowe may have committed contempt.

But why Slowe and not the DPP too? The situation is not similar in that drastic action should be taken against the DPP because she practises law in Guyana. Mr. Slowe made his comments after he was retired from the police force. The DPP is in a greater moral dilemma. She is not only an officer of the law but has far greater jurisdiction in the distribution of justice than a majority of legal personnel in the country.

The DPP has now taken a plunge into boiling water. Even if she was annoyed at the airport search the arrogance of asking for disciplinary action against the officer was indeed completely unacceptable. The situation with Dr. David Hinds of the WPA is completely the opposite.

Hinds is an opposition activist that was a victim of a political directive (from what my investigation bore out after speaking to two CANU officers). It is my believe that if Hinds’s suitcase had fallen to the ground and attracted the curiosity of the anti-narcotic officer a search would not have created the publicity that followed after Hinds was singled out.

It is idiotically unwise to think that there was a political order to probe Mrs. Shalimar Hack luggage. She is generally seen by political observers as someone favoured by the political elites. Attorney Gino Persaud on his eponymous blog has asserted that Mr. Arif Bulkan was overlooked in preference to Hack in the application process (see ginopersaud.blogspot.com).

The thought that has run through the mind of anyone who read the revelation that came out of the Full Court ruling against the DPP is does she think she is above the law. If Mrs. Hack can object to the examination of her luggage at the airport one must ask if she wouldn’t have the same attitude towards routine road blocks of the police. I know many well-known citizens, including the publisher of this newspaper, who were stopped at road bocks and the police just did their routine probe. It happened twice to me. As soon as I drove up, they recognized me, said “hello Mr. Kissoon, just a routine thing.”

In minutes, they were finished. I never thought for a moment that they knew who I was and shouldn’t peep into the car trunk. These are things one just accepts as part of life.

In the case of Mrs. Hack it took a deadly turn. As it happened, the police rank involved in the luggage ended up being charged with cocaine trafficking on the advice of the DPP who wanted him severely dealt with in the first place because of an encounter with him. Readers should note that a PPP parliamentarian was quoted in the press as saying that when the law was amended to allow the State to appeal decisions by a judge and jury, the DPP, who was consulted, wanted more drastic changes. What a country we live in!

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