Dismissal at one’s pleasure is a fiction

Nov 29, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Minister of Public Security has issued a letter sending the Commissioner of Police home on special leave in the public interest, and at his pleasure. The Minister of Public Security has no powers to send the Commissioner of Police on leave in the public interest. Neither can the Minister ‘remove’ the Commissioner at his pleasure.
Any view which is otherwise represents a cock-eyed perspective on the relevant constitutional provisions. The offering of reasons for sending the Commissioner home in the public interest does not make lawful what is inherently unlawful. Dismissal at one’s pleasure is a fiction.
The Bar Association has said nothing so far. All the groups which had railed against the actions of the President in unilaterally appointing a Chairperson of GECOM have remained silent in the face of yet another blatant assault on the Constitution. Perhaps, Guyanese are getting tired of challenging or contesting these frequent extra-constitutional excursions of the APNU+AFC administration.
What is most interesting is that the Commissioner has been asked to stay at home in the public interest, yet he is expected to return sometime in January. What is he returning for? How can someone be deemed inimical to the public interest to the extent that he is kept off the job, yet will be allowed to return to serve until the date of his retirement?
Something is wrong here. Why send the Commissioner on special leave only for him to return for a few weeks after? What is the message that is being sent here? If there were serious grounds for sending him on special leave in the first place, then how do those grounds suddenly no longer exist after January?
One has to question the thought process at work here. Why send the Commissioner of Police home only for Christmas? Why not have sent him on leave until the date of his retirement? Is it that the Minister recognizes that the legal limb on which he stands is weak and cannot support whatever legal justifications he can offer.
Does the Minister really expect to get the best out of the Commissioner of Police when he returns, after the Minister would have publicly humiliated the man by sending him home on special leave?
The sending of the Commissioner of Police of Guyana on special leave would have made headlines across the Caribbean. Imagine the embarrassment which this public officer has to face because some body feels that the reserve powers of the Crown was continued after Independence. Is this the way you treat persons who have given public service?
The APNU+AFC government is all about control and domination. They are bent on occupying and dominating the public space. The problem is that this has never, as the PPPC can tell them, allowed for success in crime-fighting. The PPPC tried to do the same and failed.
You cannot build a professional police force by trying to control all public offices. This is the sure path of failure.
If the government wants to see the back of the Commissioner of Police it has an option open to it. It has a report from the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into an investigation into an alleged plot to assassinate the President. The findings of this report can be sent to a tribunal, as provided for under the Constitution, and for the tribunal to recommend whether the Commissioner should be removed from office.
The APNU+AFC government knows, however, that the credibility of the report of that COI is under scrutiny and will not pass muster. As such, the administration cannot go the constitutional route, since the report is likely to be discredited. And so it has decided to go the extra-constitutional route, knowing full well that it makes no sense for the Commissioner of Police to challenge the unlawful ministerial order, since by the time that matter would come up for a hearing, the Commissioner would have reached the age of retirement.
Security of tenure is under threat. No public officer who is protected by constitutional commissions should feel safe, given that ministers are now taking it upon themselves to instruct service commissions and, arrogating to themselves Crown powers not preserved under Independence constitutions.

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