Senior Police promotions: Judge stays decision for challenge to President’s suspension of PSC to proceed

…pending Full Court ruling on applications filed by AG

High Court Judge Gino Persaud has stayed his decision to proceed with the hearing of the challenge to President Dr Irfaan Ali’s June 2021 suspension of the Police Service Commission (PSC). This is until the Full Court rules on Attorney General Anil Nandlall’s application for leave to appeal that court’s ruling, upholding his decision to the Court of Appeal of Guyana.

The Judge granted the stay of execution on Monday in the case of the PSC and Paul Slowe v the Attorney General, Police Commissioner (ag) Clifton Hicken, and Prime Minister Mark Phillips.
In that case, Slowe, a retired Assistant Commissioner of Police and immediate past Chairman of the PSC, is seeking an injunction preventing the recently reconstituted PSC from promoting senior officers of the Guyana Police Force (GPF). However, days after Slowe filed the case to block the promotion of the ranks, the acting Police Commissioner announced the promotion of 97 senior Police officers since there was no court order preventing him from doing so.

Besides an application for leave to appeal, Nandlall has also asked the Full Court to stay its May 9 decision to uphold the March 9 ruling of Justice Persaud in which he held that he will proceed with hearing Slowe’s challenge to the President’s suspension of the constitutional commission.
In light of the Full Court’s decision, Justice Persaud’s ruling stands.
The Full Court will rule on the Attorney General’s applications this Thursday. The matter in which Slowe is seeking injunctive relief against the PSC will come up for hearing on July 22.

Public interest
Before Justice Persaud, Nandlall had contended that, given the three-year life of the previous PSC had expired in August 2021, during the course of Slowe’s challenge, the case was dead, and should be struck out.
In his ruling, however, Justice Persaud had held that the issues raised in the challenge are matters of public interest. Relying on several local, regional, and overseas case laws, he had reasoned that the issue of the legality of the [Commission’s] suspension “…should be heard and determined on its merits, being a matter of public interest”.

To hold otherwise, the Judge had noted, would be to leave the legality of the suspension hanging – never to be adjudicated upon simply because of the inescapable fact that the life of the Commission had come to an end after these proceedings were filed.
“This does not seem to me either logical or fair, but rather an affront to fairness; natural justice; access to justice; and, indeed, the rule of law. A hearing and determination would serve to bring clarity to the role of the Executive in such instances, and ensure that the constitutionally-granted autonomy of the PSC remains protected,” Justice Persaud had reasoned.

Grounds
In the grounds in support of his new application, Slowe said that on August 9, 2018, he, and retired Assistant Commissioners of Police Clinton Conway, Vesta Adams, and Claire Jarvis were appointed Commissioners of the PSC by former President David Granger.
According to him, as part of the duties, they drafted a list of 132 Police officers to be promoted, and sent it to the PSC’s Secretary to have it sent to then Police Commissioner (ag) Nigel Hoppie for the promotions to be effected.
However, Slowe said, the list was never sent to the Secretary and was leaked to Assistant Commissioner of Police Calvin Brutus and then to the public.
Then, on June 16, 2021, President Ali “unconstitutionally and illegally” suspended the PSC by sending individual letters of suspension to its Commissioners, Slowe submitted.
The promotions list was publicised on June 28, 2021, hours after Chief Justice Roxane George, SC, had dismissed a challenge filed by several senior Police officers who were aggrieved by their non-promotion. The challenge had delayed the promotion of ranks by more than six months. Later that day, the Government rejected as unlawful and illegal the list of purported promotions.

Fraud charges
President Ali had suspended the PSC after its Chairman Paul Slowe and Commissioner Conway, were slapped with fraud charges. They, along with other retired and serving members of the GPF, have been implicated in a $10 million fraud over duties delegated to them for revising the Police Force’s raft of Standing Orders. It is alleged that they collected payments amounting to $10 million, but never provided the Force with a raft of revised Standing Orders.
In addition, Slowe is facing three counts of sexual assault. It is alleged that on three occasions in 2019, at Police Headquarters, Eve Leary, Georgetown, he sexually assaulted a senior Policewoman by rubbing her left leg and foot without her consent.

Inevitable difficulty
The retired cop, in his new case, submitted that he has been advised by his lawyers, and believes, that the injunction would assist in preserving the status quo of the pending proceedings. He reasoned that should the injunction be refused, the reconstituted PSC would be allowed to promote officers, causing inevitable difficulty at the end of the pending matter.
“When the promotions from the previous list are effected and those said officers were promoted, the previous list which this matter touches and concerns, especially since from the previous list they may have been promoted, making them eligible for promotion to a higher rank.”
Slowe pointed out, “For example, if a Sergeant was on the previous list promoted to the rank of Inspector, he would be entitled to not be promoted to the rank of Assistant Superintendent and not be promoted twice on two separate lists as an Inspector.”
The former PSC Chairman further pointed out that if the injunction is not granted, and this matter is subsequently completed and the previous promotions on the past list are effected, there would be inevitable issues as to which officers are of a higher rank than others, if the promotions would be backdated, and there would be future problems as to who will be entitled to be Commanders and even the Commissioner of Police.

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