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What a thing!

Aug 16, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Politicians get away with things in this country that are unbelievable. But even more amazing is the fact that whenever persons in authority do the most inexplicable things, there are legions of supporters who are willing, quite shamelessly too, to jump to their defence.

But what beats all in this God-forsaken land is when those who are victims of certain actions which are plainly wrong, simply sit back, and, for reasons they know best, accept the wrong things that are done to them.

The government was presumptuous to have written the Police Service Commission asking them to put on hold promotions without providing a reason for the request. The government had tried this before with the Public Service Commission and had been rebuffed.

In fact, that request to put on hold promotions was challenged in the courts and was held to be unconstitutional. Yet, the government had the temerity and contempt to once again repeat this action, this time with the Police Service Commission.

How more brazen and contemptuous of legal precedent can one get? It is as if the government has absolutely no regard for the rule of law. And that is not just crazy, it is terrifying. Does the government have no respect for the law?

But what is shocking is to read that the Police Service Commission – appointed to ensure that there is no political interference in appointments; appointed with a mandate to ensure that it acts without any political direction – can go ahead and accede to the request of the government, even though it was said that some members felt that the actions of the government were unconstitutional. Can you believe that?

If something is illegal, how can you accede to it? And this despite there being a legal precedent about this matter. What a country we live in.

Some persons, of course, have a penchant for defending the indefensible. They have dug up a reason to morally legitimize what is legally unlawful. The excuse is that the government acted correctly, because persons who have appeared before an ongoing Commission of Inquiry into an investigation done by the police were recommended for promotion by the Commissioner of Police?

So what? The Police Service Commission does not have to wait on the outcome of any COI before making promotions. If a case is established in the COI that a person promoted was fingered or implicated in criminal conduct or negligence, then those findings can be forwarded to the Police Service Commission for disciplinary action, including dismissal.

But that is beside the point, because it is not for any agency to try to indicate to the Police Service Commission that there is an ongoing COI. The members of the Police Service Commission do not need to be told about this. They must know about it. So they do not need to be told anything. In fact, it was never suggested to them that it is because of the COI that they should not make promotions.

The issue about persons under investigation being recommended by a top official for promotion is a red herring. The Police Service Commission is not a rubber stamp. It does not rubber stamp the recommendations of the Commissioner of Police. It conducts its own interviews and evaluation of persons. So, it matters not who is recommended.

The fact of the matter is that the government is up to its old games. The previous Judicial Service Commission had in 2015 submitted a number of recommendations for appointment of judges. The government sat on those recommendations until it had engineered the appointment of a new Judicial Service Commission who reviewed the appointments.

The same thing is going to happen with police promotions. The government does not want the outgoing Commission to make any appointments. It wants to put a new Commission in place, one in which it will have more confidence. This is naked self- interest at work, and it is being achieved by running roughshod over the Constitution.

And guess what? There are persons in our society who will sit and accept this sort of violation of the highest law of the land.

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