Brent Zephyrine

Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards says his role and func­tion in gov­er­nance have been per­ceived as be­ing "en­tire­ly cer­e­mo­ni­al" be­cause the pub­lic has not had much in­sight in­to what his du­ties en­tail.That per­cep­tion, Richards said, could be bet­ter re­fined through the Web site of the Of­fice of The Pres­i­dent-www.thep­res­i­dent.tt- which was of­fi­cial­ly launched at Knowsley, Queen's Park West, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day."The fact that in this na­tion the Head of State is not al­so the head of gov­ern­ment, means that for many of our cit­i­zens the roles and func­tions of the Pres­i­dent are of­ten seen, at best, to be un­clear and at worst, en­tire­ly cer­e­mo­ni­al," he said.

Richards added: "I be­lieve that this Web site will serve as an im­por­tant step in ed­u­cat­ing our cit­i­zens by open­ing to them a vir­tu­al win­dow in­to the pres­i­den­cy, as it would be up­dat­ed to re­flect the cur­rent ac­tiv­i­ties of the of­fice."Out­lin­ing some of the fea­tures of the Web site, he al­lud­ed to the ac­cess of data­bas­es which in­clud­ed more than 1,600 en­tries of na­tion­al awards re­cip­i­ents, de­tails of over 800 events, 130 pres­i­den­tial speech­es, in­ter­ac­tive quizzes and pho­tos in ex­cess of 750.

In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer to the Pres­i­dent, Michael­la Fred­er­ick, said while "this Web site aimed to de­mys­ti­fy the pres­i­den­cy," it al­so was de­ter­mined to high­light the his­to­ry of the pres­i­den­cy as it at­tempt­ed to serve as a ref­er­ence of re­search for stu­dents with­in an in­ter­ac­tive medi­um that was not on­ly at­trac­tive, but "in­for­ma­tive, in­ter­ac­tive and dy­nam­ic."Fred­er­ick laud­ed the col­lab­o­ra­tion of the fol­low­ing en­ti­ties which she cit­ed as in­te­gral to the birth of the Web site:

The Na­tion­al In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre (NICTC), The Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (Nalis), Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vice (GIS), Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vice Lim­it­ed (GISL) as well as Philip Colthrustt and his team at Sight­Fac­to­ry Lim­it­ed.