MY TEMERITY SOMETIMES goes before me, but doesn’t it seem to you, dear reader, that it is taking rather long for some definitive picture to be painted of the true situation behind the forced retirement of Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin?
This is a matter that reached a head with his forced leave some week ago, but prior to that the Police Service Commission (PSC) and the top cop have been at war and the matter stalled so much in court that one Queen’s Counsel was led to act inappropriately out of sheer frustration.
The case now seems set for further delays.
I was not surprised last Friday when the sitting dealing with Dottin’s case took under 30 minutes and was adjourned. Add to that the injunction involving Seymour Cumberbatch regarding the post of Deputy Commissioner, and one can begin to envision a drawn-out fiasco that may either end with the Commissioner and his cousin Cumberbatch raking in millions in damages or ending when they’re both somewhere in their 70s, or when some of the principal players have gone to the Great Beyond.
I have not so far been led to understand that the Commissioner is now fighting for his pension, since “retirement leave” would make that a natural consequence.
So the wrangle has to do with the embarrassment brought to the Commissioner’s office and to himself personally – since any failure by him to fight this would lead the public to believe him guilty of some unknown wrongdoing.
If only walls could talk! However, paper trails do, and no matter how long this case drags on – and I suspect the Barbadian public is in this for the long haul, at least those who care – the truth “will out”.
We have long lived in a country where the public has been kept in the dark for years, where the full story often never unfolds, and where rumour thrives to become “truth” and even the essence of folklore.
I would not wish that to occur in this instance. The removal of a police commissioner in this country has never happened before and has so shocked some Barbadians that they cannot believe this to be the well-ordered country in which they were born and bred.
Such an act was reserved, we would’ve thought, for countries ruled by drug lords or the underworld, or for places whose democracy is very much undeveloped – not a place that has been described as the fastest developing country in the world and indeed one of the most literate!
I wish Dottin well, since I have no knowledge of his management style other than what I would have gleaned from news conferences and the occasional interview. He has always been pleasant in our mutual professional interaction.
I also wish the PSC well if its mission is to get to the truth. This is all that matters and the public should be given no less.
Pizza Man Doc’s dilemma
ON ANOTHER NOTE, I wait with bated breathfor some response from either the Government, possibly through its minister responsible for business, or from the private sector, about Gray “Doc” Brome’s heart-rending dilemma regarding his intended closure of more than half of the Pizza Man Doc restaurants.
For the man who made an Italian delicacy into part of the daily Bajan household menu, his woes should not be spoken into the wind while some go on with business as usual.
Is there something the Barbados Private Sector Association or the Chamber of Commerce or any similar entity can suggest to Brome in order to help him, for instance, tighten his management structure, eliminate possible wastage of resources, cut overheads or reduce debt?
Brome represents a vital part of those he has fed, the business sector and the workforce – basically the essence of the Social Partnership – so what he is going through must be of concern to all of us.
Will someone assist him or use his story as a statistic and a politically-driven example of Barbados’ economic woes?
• Ricky Jordan is an Associate Editor. Email rickyjordan@nationnews.com.
