BASSANIO: If it please you to dine with us.
SHYLOCK …I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with.
(The Merchant of Venice Act 1 Scene 3)
Such was the state of Mr Dulalchan’s plea on Wednesday, with an appetite for public service, asking to steer the rudderless police service and perhaps into battle against the criminal scourge plaguing this nation.
The Government’s response: (no less Shylockian) “it is not about the individual it is about process,” ostensibly accepting Mr Dulalchan the individual but using its Parliamentary majority to subvert the legally effectual nomination of the Police Service Commission, to ensure that he remains extraneous to the inner sanctums of power and high office.
The citizenry will no doubt adjudicate on the hate that took place in Parliament, upon its convening to debate the report of a Special Select Committee into the Police Service Commission’s selection of Mr Dulalchan as the top cop! The Government speakers fumbled, meandered and exuded contempt at the prospect of Mr Dulalchan attaining the rank of Commissioner of Police.
I expected no less from a Government that has yet to find an equal place within its Cabinet to incorporate different experiences and views in the process of national decision making. Its first notable use of power was to remove Mr Jwala Rambaran as Governor of the Central Bank.
Maybe, I am somehow skewed in my vision and see patterns where none exists. If the Government were even-handed in its approach and was solely concerned with the preservation, integrity of processes and stature of public offices, it would no doubt use its power to scrutinise all public offices which have faced serious allegations and calls for investigations.
What then is the citizenry to make of the Government’s approach to our embattled Chief Justice? It seems convenient for the Government to invoke its supervisory jurisdiction to commission a report into the process of the PSC and wield its power to cut down Mr Dulalchan’s nomination! But amidst the spectrum of incessant and erudite calls for the Government to invoke its constitutional power to set up a tribunal to investigate the Chief Justice, nothing but silence.
Hope is not lost. In the same way that the Equal Opportunity Commission promptly published its press release inviting Ms Nakhid to lodge a complaint against the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha for her perceived discrimination, one can reasonably trust and expect that Mr Dulalchan would receive an invitation from the EOC and benefit from an equal dispensation of consideration and courtesy.
Where do we go from here? With calculated timing, the former National Security Minister Gary Griffith has seen it fit to issue a pre-action protocol letter to the new chairman of the PSC arguing that he should be appointed to the position of Commissioner of Police.
The timing of the Government’s actions and its continuing habit of blatantly riding roughshod over top public servants will result in only one thing. Persons deserving of top positions will be left behind. High offices will never be staffed with the most suitable candidates.
In the meantime, Prime Minister Dr Rowley advised the President that by-elections for the electoral districts of Barataria in the San Juan Laventille Regional Corporation and Belmont East in the Port-of-Spain City Corporation will be held on July 16, 2018. Why did Dr Rowley take such a long time before announcing the by-elections? Certainly, he knows that the failure to hold elections in a timely manner can easily be viewed as a creeping dictatorship.
Notwithstanding threats by the Leader of the Opposition to initiate legal proceedings against Dr Rowley as Prime Minister, he did not care to act expeditiously. Maybe he has been preoccupied with foreign trips in recent times that petty domestic matters such as by-elections could have waited.
Having gone past the halfway mark, it appears that the Rowley-led PNM Government has warmed the leadership seat, becoming idle and complacent with its duties. Worst of all, it has become completely oblivious to the crime splurge plaguing our beloved nation. Maybe I can cut to the chase and simply say that they don’t care. Only time will tell.
