Panday says PNM wants police state

The controversy over the refusal of the government to accept the nomination of Snr. Supt. Stephen Williams for the post of police commissioner is growing. And now there is talk that the Police Service Commission (PSC) that recommended Williams for the job might quit.

Reports suggest that members of the PSC are upset about what they say is a misrepresentation of their work in Parliament. They say it’s not true that the commission took 10 months to recruit and nominate a successor to Trevor Paul who quit as commissioner last week. They say it was a two-month exercise.

And the man at the centre of the controversy says he will speak about his meeting with Prime Minister Patrick Manning at Whitehall. Reports indicate that Manning summoned Williams to his office and told him that the government would not accept his nomination and that he should withdraw, a move he reportedly refused to make.

Neither Manning nor Williams has spoken publicly about the meeting although Manning has confirmed that it was held.

Williams didn’t buy the explanation that Government House Leader Colm Imbert offered, which is that the selection process used was flawed.

“A flawed process in my opinion is when you do not follow what is laid down. The PSC followed exactly what was laid down so the issue of flawed process is a non-issue,” Williams told the Newsday newspaper.

Senior police sources have suggested that Government did not support the nomination of Williams because he is not aligned to the PNM and is considered an independent person.

Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday said there was a simple explanation for the whole affair: Government wanted James Philbert as Police Commissioner, and that’s what it got.

And Panday added a new dimension to the debate. "He is the man who brought all those voter-padding cases (against the UNC). He is the one who has been carrying out the PNM's agenda…there is really no vacancy now,” he told the Trinidad Express.

The former prime minister said this was a case of the government wanting to control the Police Service, noting that it rejected its own motion to appoint the nominee selected by the PSC in order to have their man in charge.

He said this is clear evidence that the government is trying to establish a police state in which the police would serve the wishes of the governing party. And he wondered what was wrong with Williams.

For its part the government said it thought Williams was a good candidate but faulted the process of selection, rejecting his nomination on a technicality. Few people are accepting the government's explanation.

And the American who was one of three men considered for the post told the Newsday newspaper he was shocked that the government rejected Williams, whom he described as a very professional police officer.

Capt. Louis Vega told the paper there was absolutely nothing flawed about the process of selection as claimed by Imbert.

“I thought it was one of the most rigid exercises I have ever gone through in my career which has spanned over forty years, and I found nothing wrong with it,” Vega said.

On May 6 and 7, the PSC interviewed the top three of the short-listed candidates — Vega, Philbert and Williams. Williams was the first in the order of merit list. On June 13, the PSC announced that Williams was its choice for the job.