The police force is currently going through a serious crisis. The government has decided to set up a task force to look into people named in the Lam Shang Leen report. A task force headed by the director general of the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption, with the police commissioner playing a demure second fiddle.

The report puts the government into a tight-spot by calling for the disbanding of the ADSU and calling drug cases to be headed by a National Drug Investigations Authority instead. For obvious reasons, the prime minister, Pravind Jugnauth, has kept mum about it, instead effusively praising the ADSU. For one thing, having the judiciary investigate and then also judge drug cases is a dangerous proposition of itself. But even if Jugnauth were so inclined, there is no telling which way an uncontrollable judiciary might take drug cases, some of which reach into the Sun Trust. On the other hand, the police would resent this judicial over-reach and with elections not far away, there is little point in alienating so many voting policemen and their families for the sake of a questionable proposition put forward by Lam Shang Leen. But after three years of hype and expectation in the compiling of the report, doing nothing would make the government look weak. So Jugnauth decides to put the cases highlighted within the report under the thumb of one of his own creatures, the ICAC.

It’s a move of breathtaking amateurishness as, immediately, three questions come to mind. The first is that since article 5 of the Constitution says that the police commissioner “shall not be subject to the direction or the control of any other person or authority”, is Mario Nobin allowed by the Constitution to play second fiddle to the ICAC? Is it constitutionally viable to have a constitutionally autonomous police commissioner being part of a task force headed by a politically nominated (and hence at the mercy of the government) director general of the ICAC? Is Navin Beekharry allowed to give Nobin instructions, even with the context of the task force? And more importantly, is Nobin actually supposed to kowtow in response?

Second question: what on earth does the ICAC have to do with drug crimes? The ICAC is supposed to deal with corruption and that too is limited to the public sector. Its enabling legislation (the PoCA) says nothing about drugs, or lawyers for that matter. Drugs fall firmly within the purview of the police. So based on what expertise and what legal authority will the ICAC presume to lead this task force?

Third question: the constitution bars the police commissioner from taking orders precisely to prevent others from meddling in investigations. But is not this constitutional safeguard reduced to a mockery if a government is simply allowed to ring-fence certain cases, encroach on the functions of the police and allot them under another authority? Does the government even have such powers? What’s next? A task force under ICAC to look into home robberies and murders until all the police is left with is the power to decide how to chase hawkers at the Victoria bus station? The prime minister can lavish as much praise as he likes on the ADSU, but this move is a massive vote of no-confidence in their abilities. By acquiescing in this move, Nobin is willfully undermining the constitutional autonomy granted to his force. Or is it the case that being supine for so long has made the police forget that it’s supposed to be independent?

Herein lies the ultimate lesson out of all this: the Constitution is just a scrap of paper without the will to enforce and protect it.

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