Vindicated!
That’s the way former police commissioner Gary Griffith said he felt after the Court of Appeal kept an injunction restraining the Prime Minister from laying the FUL report or its executive summary in Parliament.
In a statement, Griffith said: “I feel vindicated that my actions of going to court to get an injunction to restrain the Prime Minister from publishing the FUL report in Parliament, because of the breach of my natural justice rights, as well as concerns I have with the constitutionality of the report itself, are right and just.”
Griffith said he initiated court action as he recognised that Parliament affords sitting MPs an opportunity “to share untruths without legal consequences.”
He said he also took action because as the then head of the TTPS, during the time the audit focused on, rules of natural justice were breached, as Griffith never met with anyone.
“Today, (Wednesday) they lost the appeal and although amendments were made to the injunction, the facts are the injunction stands and they will have to pay costs to me as a result,” Griffith said.
“Amazingly, in a desperate attempt to save face, the Attorney General’s release on the matter alludes to they getting what they wanted, but this is surely a ludicrous statement, since if they got what they wanted, they wouldn’t have to pay costs,” he said.
He also accused AG Reginald Armour, SC, of trying to spin the ruling by claiming it was also the PM’s intention for people potentially affected by the report “to be heard.”
“This they say, despite the facts being that after the PM received the completed report, he then handed it over to the Police Service Commission and the Ag Commissioner of Police, without my input. So logically, the plan was to lay it in Parliament without my input, hence why their appeal failed, and why they have to pay costs.”
Griffith said he saw no value in laying the report in Parliament as there is no substance to aid national security, “because if the audit had recommendations and policy change was needed, then it could have been done right there in the office of the Commissioner of Police or in Cabinet.”
He said if there was a law that needed to be amended, then a draft could have been sent to Parliament to enact changes, “and this too does not require the report to be laid in Parliament.” In other words, he said, other motives were afoot.
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