PNCR Leader Robert Corbin said yesterday he could not possibly consider President Bharrat Jagdeo's deal to expand the Police Service Commission since he said it was simply a ruse by the PPP/C to gain political control of the force.
But at the party's weekly press briefing at Congress Place, Sophia, he also said he had received from the Office of the President an invitation for meaningful consultations on the appointment of the remaining members of the Public and Teaching Service Commissions.
Despite this he was curious as to when the consultation with the Minister of Local Government and the local government bodies on the nominees for the appointment of the Teaching Service Com-mission would commence.
The protracted delay in the appointments of these two commissions, as well as those for the Police and Judicial Service commissions, has been lengthened by what Jagdeo describes as an anomaly in the Constitution as it relates to the composition of the Police Service Commis-sion.
According to a statement from the Office of the President issued a few hours after Corbin's press conference, this was because "the Constitutional Reform Commission's report to the National Assembly recommended that the Police Service Commission be similarly composed to the Public Service Commission and the Teaching Service Commis-sion."
Jagdeo had proposed that this could be corrected by expanding the commission by three members and in return for their acquiescence was willing to give the PNCR a nominee on the Public and Teaching Service Commis-sions. Corbin has refused to respond to both an informal proposal and one formally submitted in July.
The PPP/C has made much of his failure to respond saying only last week that this was holding up the establishment of the commissions.
But Corbin made it clear yesterday that there was "neither a mistake in the Consti-tution, nor was there any failure to carry out recommendations of the Constitutional Reform Commission."
He said the present constitutional provisions were approved by a two-thirds majority of Parliament and assented to by President Jagdeo himself in 2001.
He added that, "Jagdeo had informed me that his offer would not be included in the constitutional amendment but would be left to 'convention'. The president could not really be serious." He also asked, given the nature of the offer, whether the president considered meaningful consultation as just another device for making a unilateral appointment.
Corbin went on to suggest it was the president who had been delaying all the time because "there was nothing to prevent meaningful consultation on the appointment of the Chairman of the Police Service Com-mission" since the nominees were named by parliament several months ago.
The amended Constitution now provides for a seven-member Teaching Service Commis-sion. One is the Chief Education Officer, another a nominee of the Guy-ana Teacher's Union, two others appointed by the Minister of Local Government after he has consulted with local government bodies and three others by the president after meaningful consultation with the Leader of the Opposition.
As the law now stands, the five-member Police Service Commission consists of four members nominated by the Police Association. The president appoints a Chairman from these four members after meaningful consultation with the Leader of the Opposition. The fifth member is the Chairman of the Public Service Commission.
Corbin said that before he left Guyana for Canada he had drawn the nation's attention to the prospect of the loss of public confidence in the process of constructive engagement due to the delay in the implementation of agreements. He said that both President Jagdeo and the PPP/C had missed this point in their criticisms of this statement.