House of Assembly Intervention
…on the Police Bill
4th February, 2009

Today would have been the 59th wedding anniversary of my parents.  I would wish to pay respects to them as I begin to speak today, both of them sadly passed on.

The story of the reporter calling me to talk about a bit of gossip that made its way to the trashy press on Monday, when there were serious issues in the country says much about where we are.

One of the serious issues is how the public service is now being treated and for the purposes of this debate how the so-called restructuring of the Force is being carried out.  We are told that this bill is part of that restructuring.

The PM’s statement:
 “It is in the nature of human institutions that they must be constantly under review to insure that they are functioning in accordance with their highest values and mandates.  This is certainly true of public institutions that are susceptible to negative influences, even the entrenchment of bad habits.
 “It is the intention of my Government to pursue with utmost vigour and determination our Trust Agenda for the strengthening of all branches, agencies and departments of The Bahamas Government and to initiate reforms where necessary.
 “We fully intend to work towards a new culture of excellence in the service of the Bahamian people, a culture of ethical conduct on the part of those who serve, a culture that is hostile to slackness and corrupt practices.
 “We expect that some elements of this process will be painful and we fully expect to be criticized. We may even have to pay a political price.”

This statement against the background of the so-called restructuring sullies the reputations of those men and women in the Force who recently departed.  This is an incredible attack on their reputations and those of other public officers against whom not one single charge has been publicly laid.  An apology is required from the government.

We know we will not get one but there is still a need to be reminded that decency is a desirable quality in this society.

In this dispensation, this FNM dispensation, everyone is a crook except them.  How could that be?  It is counterintuitive.  The FNM cannot be the repository of all that is good in the world and the rest of us all that is bad.  We went to the same schools, go to the same churches, live in the same country, yet one group seeks to govern by demonizing the other side.

There is a saying you will reap what you sow.

And I think about all these dictators, like Mugabe and Duvalier and the Shah and others who thought an end would never come.  But the end comes and it is in their interests to remind the government that the end will come.

Maybe morning, maybe soon, maybe evening, hopefully soon but the end will come and you will still have to live in this society.  So these same people who you have mashed up, destroyed their dignity, demonized for your political ends and their children will still be around and you will have to deal with them and they will deal with you.

So I on behalf of my party want to do what is decent in this circumstance and that is to thank them for their service to this country.  No one should be called in and told after their life’s work is at its height to pack up and go home and then the country is told a stunning untruth that it was voluntary.  As the late Sir Lynden used to say: voluntary my foot.

I am only sorry that this forum does not permit me to use more emotive language about this outrageous behaviour but there will also come a time for that.

There is a way to do things.  Allow the officers to say farewell to their comrades, to march in their final parade.  You seek to leave people’s dignity in tact.

They used Section 66(6) of the existing act and sought to use two examples from the previous tenure of a PLP govt. to justify its use.

The FNM knows that that is pernicious; that the examples they sought to use are not appropriate to this matter.  They know because in the new bill Clause 94, they have now put in a section dealing with compulsory retirement.  Police officers have to retire at 60.  But the first question is if a gazette officer now can serve to 65 how will this affect those who are now over 60.  Is it lawful to impose such a condition.  And one of them is the present Acting COP who is 64 and has a year to go.  He is unconfirmed.

The PM is passing this act for what reason.  Not for reform, we support reform and passed a reform act, which is not being repealed.  Is this merely an exercise to prevent a candidate, perhaps one of the most qualified candidates ever, from reaching the job as COP, a job he was promised when he was unnecessarily sent off to school last year to Canada.  This bill, this delay is part of a scheme to frustrate him off the job.

In laying off the group of fifteen officers, they are entitled to ask how do you keep a 64 year old man on the job at the head of the Force and lay off those who are 55 on the grounds that they are too old to be useful to the force and your restructuring.  It does not add up.

The Govt. used a threat in a letter written by the PS at National Security in which somehow, the mind of the autonomous Police Service Commission was betrayed.  In that the PS suggested that the Commission was seeking to eliminate them from the Force and so they had better go before they were forced to do so.  The law is clear on the autonomy of the Police Service Commission.

The role of a COP is not to be an FNM ideologue,  or a PLP ideologue, not to be someone who might come to a Prime Minister or as Prime Minister Michael Manley once told me “so far forget themselves as to say at the beginning of a PM’s tenure: ‘You know I don’t support your party’.  Not someone who is condemned by a Commission of Inquiry.  Not to be someone who is the subject of controversy in the command and control operations with foreign states and how that authority is exercised with regard to Bahamian citizens.  He is to be the COP for everyone; PLP and FNM; in between and indifferent; for all; and if the PLP objects, or if the shoe is on the other foot, the FNM objects, it would be foolhardy to appoint such a person to that job.

Our concern is anything that erodes the constitutional protections of the office as this appears to do by these two five year terms which institutionalizes singing, the COP singing for his supper to get the second five year term to whoever leads the political directorate.

The US struggled with this after J. Edgar Hoover served as the Director of the FBI.  And it is well known the blackmail he engaged in of Presidents so it made him untouchable.  They came up with a single ten-year term, which straddles at least two Presidencies so it has to be a choice that the other side can live with.

I used the example of J Edgar Hoover deliberately because of that blackmail of politicians.  And I see that this bill does not deal with the operational control of the police intelligence services.  It does not include a national security council.  There is no civilian oversight of police intelligence.  Imagine then if you get an FNM ideologue in charge of that office today, the mischief that can occur, particularly since we have seen the evidence of widespread leaks out the Police Force of a purely political anti PLP nature in the last eighteen months.  There must be legislation  laying out the country’s national security structure and operational control over police intelligence operations and civilian oversight of it.  Oversight by the Parliament in fact.

The Police Force, the Defence Force and all of them and each of them from the top to the bottom have to come, recognize and accept in their jobs that they are subject to the supervision, direction and control of civilian authorities, including Members of Parliament from both sides, and their role is not to play favourites with either side, adopting in some cases the terminology of the governing party in its propaganda campaigns.  It is not the role of the police to use purloined evidence to try to sully the names of the political opponents of a governing party.

Clause 48.  This should be deleted from the Bill.  Police prosecutions should cease and all prosecutions come from the AG’s office.  There is abuse of the system now.  The lack of convictions.  The story of two officers and their explaining to me what the view is of CID and CDU.  CID got convictions.  CDU gets public relations.  And boy do they know how to do it.  Arranging the perp walk, arranging the press with cameras, with pictures of suspects who they cannot convict but who are convicted anyway by the press walking them in chains, describing people as dangerous when there is no evidence that they are.  Cherry picking courts when they believe that a court may give them a more favourable outcome.  This present system should be replaced by one that is accountable, open, transparent and fair.

Clause 67.  The reserves.  Some Family Is. Stations and Nassau stations at night cannot exist without the reserves.  Time to look at their pay and conditions since they have all the rights and privileges and stop treating them like second-class officers.

Their benefits to insurance should be equal to that of other officers.  There ought to be assistance when they get injured in the line of duty to protect their jobs.  One issue that is a morale buster is a decision of the COP not to allow the Reserve Band to play at the funerals of reserve police officers.

I speak up as I take my seat for the public service and the rule of law.  Hold on just a little longer.  Our national nightmare will soon be over.  I may not get there with you but one day soon it will be over.  The breeze will be fresh again.

I adopt the arguments of my learned colleague the Member for Ft. Charlotte.

Thank you very much indeed.