Do we have a culture of expectation?

I have often thought that Trinidad, and possibly Tobago, carries a culture of expectations in its backpack.

It even mangles the grammar of the concept of "rights," with a casual insistence that one government department or another "has a right" to provide a promised food card to a hungry, jobless family with eight children, when it means "a responsibility."

It certainly has a responsibility, when it has promised them a food card, to provide them with one.

But maybe a word was misspelt on the application form? Or it got misfiled?

The exposed comments that surfaced last weekend in the press expressed a visual denial that a right to education or even to equality before the law exists.

And one wonders, after three years of asking, was the food card given to someone else? And the children, who have never been able to go to school – which another government department has a responsibility to ensure happens: can it simply feign ignorance?

But the culture of expectations, like hope, continues to arise and, even unfulfilled, keeps people from rioting, burning tyres and blocking roads. At least for a while.

In industrial relations, there is a term known as legitimate expectation, which, applied or misapplied, has given rise to some interesting disputes over the years. Especially when it applies to employees lucky enough to be employed at one or another branch of the public service, military or what back in the day was called "the constabulary."

Those who did so saw themselves as having employment for life, come what may.

I actually heard a politician announce she had joined the teaching service because she knew she could never be fired or lose her job as long as she had that position. After years of continuous absenteeism from teaching, pursuing her political interests (not trade-union interests, which are or should be, a different thing) she left the service with a solid pension.

One classic example which exemplifies both the cultural and the legal aspects of this most interesting approach involved a police officer who genuinely held a legitimate expectation of advancing his career by studying and obtaining a law degree while in the police service. Many people join the service just for that reason – not just in TT, but, based on British colonial tradition, which is foundational in regional police organisations, throughout what used to be known as the British West Indies.

In this particular case, the young man had applied for a two-year study leave to enable him to qualify for a Legal Education Certificate (LEC) at the Sir Hugh Wooding Law School in St Augustine.

He had already qualified for a law degree at Cave Hill. He had what he considered to be a legitimate expectation that the office of the Commissioner of Police would not object to his application for the study leave, even though he had no legally enforceable right to it.

As it turned out, his application was refused.

In the interests of natural justice, the practice in the Caribbean is to allow judicial review of a decision made by an authority in the government service which the recipient has a reasonable ground to feel has been unfair or unjust.

Lord Brightman, a member of the judicial committee of the Privy Council, a judge in
chief constable of the North Wales Police v Evans (1982) All ER 141, at155 said, "Judicial review, as the words imply, is not an appeal from a decision but a review of the manner in which the decision was made."

The judge in the High Court of Barbados before whom the plea for the judicial review was placed referred to over 23 cases from the Caribbean and the rest of the Commonwealth in coming to his decision.

The Commissioner of Police, in his affidavit, claimed he had made the decision not to grant the study leave on the following grounds: "I took into account – his poor work ethic, his long absence from work ostensibly on sick leave while at the same time attending university and his un-co-operative attitude and the difficulty he created for his senior officers."

The court found that before studying for his law degree he had sat with his two senior officers and worked out an approved schedule that enabled him both to study and carry out his policing work duties; in 2004 he had received a commendation for outstanding work both in theory and practice; and the charge that he was too often absent from work during the 12 months of the year referred to was made in March of that year, not at the end of the year, and therefore did not reach a standard of cogency that could be relied upon.

The conclusion was, "While the applicant had no legally enforceable right to study leave, but, by virtue of the practice, he had a reasonable expectation that he would have been granted leave."

The judge added, "I can find no overriding consideration on the evidence to justify a departure from what had been the previous practice. The expectation derived from the regular and established practice based on the past actions of the office of the commissioner in not objecting to the grant of study leave to police officers pursuing the LEC."

The officer was granted the study leave, and the process by which the Commissioner of Police in Barbados had come to his decision was declared flawed and not in accordance with the notions of fairness.

Justice was done.