President Bharrat Jagdeo will appoint Acting Commissioner of Police Henry Greene to the substantive post of Commissioner of Police and as far as he is concerned he has held consultations with the Leader of the Opposition on the issue and does not need his agreement.
Asked about follow-up consultations with Leader of the Opposition Robert Corbin in relation to the appointment of Greene as the Commissioner of Police, Jagdeo said at a press conference he held at the Office of the President on Thursday that he was disappointed that Corbin has indicated that he should have been meeting with him on the issue once more.
He said, “My recollection of the meeting was different. I spoke to him and I said look we will have to consult on the Commissioner of Police. I had an exploratory meeting on the Commissioner of Police and I proposed Henry Greene to be appointed as Commissioner of Police. We had a discussion on it and he said to me, ‘This is your person?’ and I said, “I am not going to change my mind on this” and so he said, “you should write me formally.”
“My recollection is that since you are not going to change your mind, the meeting would be taken as the consultation because I don’t need his agreement.”
Restating that he was not going to change the name of his nominee, he said that if Corbin wants to go through it just for the sake of formality sake he would call him over to say that Greene will be the person he had spoken and written to him about. “It is all nitpicking. It is too much nitpicking. I’m very disappointed…,” he said.
Asked whether he had been written to by Jagdeo on his proposal as a follow-up to the meeting they held in June 2008 on the appointment of Greene, Corbin said since then they have had no formalities exchanged in relation to the issue. At the meeting he said he was specific that the President should write to him formally about his proposal in keeping with constitutional mandates but he has not received any letter as yet.
Visa revocation
Corbin said that had Jagdeo written him he would have asked of him the same question he had put to him informally about concerns in the Guyanese public’s mind about the reason or reasons for Greene’s visa being revoked by the US government.
Jagdeo who was also critical of the opposition not taking part in the debate on a number of bills tabled in parliament dealing with a number of security-related matters said that the Leader of the Opposition had called him to say that he felt it was not good that they use the recess to debate the bills even though the government MPs were prepared to do so.
These bills are important for the security of the people of this country, he said, adding that “Members of Parliament are paid by the people of this country. I don’t see a problem with them spending a few days more in parliament doing the people’s business. However, he said that if the Leader of the Opposition was objecting to an extension of parliament into the recess because a number of people had left the country or made plans to travel, he saw nothing wrong with them coming out a few days before the recess ends.
Corbin, he said, declared that the opposition was prepared to consider this favourably. “I called him a few times afterwards. Then in the newspapers I saw (Lance) Carberry or someone saying that they doubt they can come out of the recess.” As a result of the discussion he said that if the opposition wants to have better relations they have to have good faith discussions and negotiations not just for the show of it.
Wiretapping Bill
Asked whether the joint opposition would agree to attend parliament during the recess, Corbin said that he could not agree without the AFC and other opposition MPs to return to parliament during the recess to discuss the bills, particularly the wiretapping bill, which would have serious implications for civil liberties.
In discussions with the President, Corbin said that Jagdeo wanted him to fix a date in September when parliament could be reconvened but Corbin said that he could not agree to an exact date because he could not make a commitment on behalf of the AFC since all, if not most of their MPs, were out of the country on business or vacation.
Nevertheless Corbin feels that it might be possible for the joint parliamentary opposition to agree to an early end to the recess by late September or the first week in October since most of the MPs might be available at that time. During this time, too, he said there should be some consultations on the troublesome bill. He said, “I don’t know what is the rush. The government is already illegally tapping people’s phones now in breach of the laws.”
He said that when the government proposed going into the recess to debate the bills the Parliamentary Management Committee had no idea of government’s legislative agenda since it had not been submitting the agenda in breach of parliamentary regulations. If the government had some respect for the committee, he said there would not have been the current snafu.
