The Piper-Balkissoon factor

WAYNE KUBLALSINGH

THE PIPER-BALKISSOON syndrome is not uncommon in Trinidad. Plenty dead-end strategising. Failure to execute. Blocking those who could execute. Dr Rowley is the Piper-Balkissoon factor in our criminal justice system. He has attacked progressive elements in the system, diminishing its capacity, boosting the confidence of criminals high and low.

CoP Gary Griffith

In August 2021, I learnt that a public official visited the office of president Paula Mae-Weekes and barred a Police Service Commission (PSC)’s CoP merit list. That list of candidates for police commissioner was blocked from going to Parliament. On November 1, 2021, I held a press conference opposite the President’s office and delivered a letter to Her Excellency. I wanted to know who this official was. I felt that he or she had acted precipitously, if not, ultra vires, against the law.

Her Excellency replied promptly. She did not disclose the name of the official. She questioned whether the official’s intervention could be properly deemed an “interference” as my letter had claimed. She treated with the right of the PSC to have information presented to it, rather than be kept in the dark. And, in any event, did it matter who provided this information?

I then wrote separate letters to all the members of the PSC, who had all now resigned. Members either did not respond, or claimed confidentiality on the matter. On January 2, 2022, I wrote to the members of the new commission. To “investigate the reason why the process for the selection for the CoP was interfered with on August 11 and 12, 2021, and “to consider engaging legal officers or take legal action to interpret the constitutionality of the interference.”

The PSC responded on January 26: “The commission recognises that ultimately it is a creature of statute…Unfortunately, none of the requests made in your letter can be accommodated under our constitutional remit.”

On February 22, 2021, I visited the office of the acting CoP, McDonald Jacob. I delivered a letter, which included a dossier of all correspondence on the matter. I outlined eight reasons why the police should investigate the matter. The acting commissioner acknowledged receipt of my dossier on February 23, 2022.

On March 14, 2022, the Trinidad Express carried an article headlined: "PM: It was me." The article began: “Although he was previously reluctant to admit it, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has confirmed he was the 'high-ranking official' who met with then Police Service Commission chairman Bliss Seepersad at President’s House and provided her with information with respect to then police commissioner Gary Griffith.”

AG Faris Al-Rawi

Between December 2021 and February 2021, I corresponded with and held meetings with an official in the office of the then attorney general, Faris al-Rawi. I had sent the attorney general a dossier, letters and various extracts that I had compiled on behalf of the Protectors of Prisons and Criminal Justice (PPCJ). The group was advocating for criminal justice reform. We had spent six months outside the offices of the Chief Justice, the Minister of National Security, the Attorney General, the DPP, the Commissioner of Prisons and the Parliament agitating for reform.

Of all the political officers, from both the UNC and PNM, Al-Rawi was the only one who agreed to meet. In my meetings with his representative, I learnt that he was making piecemeal, bit-by-bit, changes to the system. This, to me, was unsatisfactory. The system requires bold, far-reaching and large-scale administrative and legal alterations. However, at least, this attorney general had taken the bull by the tip of one horns. Lo and behold, on March 16, 2022, I saw a headline in the Trinidad Express, "Shake-up shocker: Faris demoted…"

DPP Roger Gaspard

On December 2, 2020, members of the PPCJ – Nazma Muller, Adrian Gokool, Denise Pitcher and myself – met with the DPP. Gaspard very precisely outlined the plethora of problems facing his office and the criminal justice system. He was earnest, forthcoming and admirably lucid. He was a line-in-the-sand man, tightly guarding his office and independence from the executive.

I subsequently presented him with a dossier of criminal matters, over 300, for review. But these reviews, as well as the sheer volume of cases on his desk, required a considerably larger staff.

At a public meeting in March 2023, the PM declared: “You want to know what is happening with the DPP’s office? None of us in this country have all that we need. But you got to make the most of what we have.” The DPP’s earnest entreaty for more staff to fill “an acute and chronic” shortage, and his plea for fully proofed and safe quarters for his vulnerable staff, reignited the Piper-Balkissoon syndrome in Dr Rowley.

So dire is the flow of blood from criminality in TT, it seems a frivolity to enjoy day-to-day living. The Prime Minister is Piper-Balkissoon combined. An exemplar of remote, feckless, self-absorbed, gambage leadership. As he has failed on the criminal justice front, he has failed on the diversification front: failure to diversify our oil and gas-based economy, to diversify transport (still more cars/highways), diversify education (to a skills-based system), diversify governance (to implement local reform promised since 2015). And waxing loudly on UNC corruption on highway property acquisition, having named a commission of enquiry in July 2019, he has failed to get it going.