PM says NDP plans to bring foreign Commissioner of Police

If the New Democratic Party (NDP) regains power in the upcoming general elections, it will bring in a foreigner to take the post of Commissioner of Police.{{more}}

So alleges Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, leader of the Unity Labour Party.

“They want to roll back the clock to colonialism,” Gonsalves accused, at a political rally held last Sunday in Park Hill.

“The NDP wants to be controlled by these foreigners.”

He added that although it has been denied, senior members of the NDP have discussed introducing a commissioner of police from the UK or Canada, should they win the next general election.

In the column ‘The NDP View: as the pressure mounts, corruption unfolds – time to ring the bell’ published in The Vincentian (Friday, August 27, 2010), the author states: “Recently, he [the Prime Minister] has been championing a rather vicious lie. He said… that NDP will bring foreigners to head the local constabulary… The party has never in any way contemplated the idea of bringing any overseas officials to head the police force…”

To the author of the column, the Prime Minister commented: “You don’t even know what is happening inside your own party!”

Referring to former Prime Minister Sir James Mitchell, former Minister of Government under the NDP Jerry Scott and former Commissioner of Police Randolph Toussaint, Gonsalves countered: “They were discussing the need, if the NDP wins, to bring in a commissioner of police from England or Canada.”

“What will happen to these young police men and women who have the ambition to be Commissioner of Police?” Gonsalves questioned.

“They [the NDP] want to tell you that you are not worthy!” he added.

The Prime Minister pointed out that such a move was tried in the past, and had failed, in Antigua & Barbuda and St Lucia; and predicted that the recent appointment of a foreign police commissioner in Trinidad & Tobago would also fail. (JV)