Ryan Ba­choo

As Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo took her oath of of­fice yes­ter­day un­der the Grand Stand of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, she used her maid­en ad­dress to an­swer the crit­ics who were against her as­sum­ing the role and ex­tend­ed a prover­bial olive branch.

“I am not at all un­mind­ful of the fact that there are those that ex­press dis­qui­et with my oc­cu­py­ing this new role, and for who, for one rea­son or an­oth­er, might not cur­rent­ly be ful­ly on board with as­sist­ing me to achieve these goals. I know that there have been voic­es from cer­tain quar­ters that have giv­en the im­pres­sion that such col­lab­o­ra­tion might not as eas­i­ly be forth­com­ing as one might have hoped,” Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo said.

“To any and every such voice, I re­peat Mer­chant’s in­vi­ta­tion in song so beau­ti­ful­ly sung this morn­ing by my beloved South­er­naires choir to ‘let us for­get spites and grudges and con­cen­trate’ and to ‘come let us sit and try to re­late’.” (Pres­i­dent’s full speech on page 18)

Her com­ment, which drew ap­plause from the au­di­ence, seemed an ob­vi­ous ref­er­ence to the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, which was fer­vent­ly against Kan­ga­loo’s nom­i­na­tion for the post in Jan­u­ary due to her af­fil­i­a­tion with the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment for over two decades.

Op­po­si­tion mem­bers were vis­i­bly ab­sent from yes­ter­day’s in­au­gu­ra­tion but still main­tained there was no boy­cott of the event (See oth­er sto­ry)

She al­so sig­nalled her in­ten­tion to press oth­er of­fice hold­ers on fix­ing is­sues cur­rent­ly af­flict­ing the coun­try, al­though she said she did not in­tend to do so in the man­ner now cur­rent­ly used by some of them. Rather, the Pres­i­dent said she aims to achieve these goals through ad­vo­ca­cy.

“My way is to be your Diplo­mat-in-Chief mak­ing the case for a bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go firm­ly but with­out ac­ri­mo­ny or bit­ter­ness. My words do not need to be shout­ed in the pub­lic square. There is al­ready too much shout­ing go­ing on in our coun­try to­day. I be­lieve we all need to be calmer and more re­flec­tive, and I pro­pose to lead in that re­gard by ex­am­ple.”

The open­ing state­ments of her ad­dress had a strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar nar­ra­tive to that of her im­me­di­ate pre­de­ces­sor, Paula-Mae Weekes.

“Dur­ing my term, I would like to con­tin­ue the work done by my pre­de­ces­sors in try­ing to de­mys­ti­fy the role,” Kan­ga­loo said.

She said her quest to make more cit­i­zens knowl­edge­able about the roles and func­tions of the Pres­i­dent will start at the grass­roots lev­el.

“As our democ­ra­cy and our so­ci­ety ma­ture, there is an in­creas­ing de­mand for our lead­ers to be­come more and more ac­ces­si­ble. The Of­fice of Pres­i­dent is no ex­cep­tion,” Kan­ga­loo said.

The Pres­i­dent added, “I think that a good place to start is at the lev­el of our pri­ma­ry school chil­dren, many of whom are here to­day... I be­lieve that height­en­ing aware­ness at the pri­ma­ry school lev­el about the role of the Pres­i­dent will help pro­mote a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the pres­i­den­cy... This is one of the things that I hope the pres­i­den­tial fu­ture that we are start­ing to write to­day will look like - a fu­ture in which there is a pop­u­la­tion that is bet­ter in­formed about the pres­i­den­cy, and that is there­fore, bet­ter able to hold it to ac­count.”

Kan­ga­loo said she would al­so like to see the pub­lic ar­eas at Pres­i­dent’s House be­come “a cra­dle for in­tel­lec­tu­al, cul­tur­al, and artis­tic ex­plo­ration” among the youth of the coun­try.

The new­ly in­stalled Pres­i­dent added, “I would like to see the Band­stand put to reg­u­lar use as a plat­form for new and emerg­ing young artistes. I would like to see the main ball­room and the grounds of Pres­i­dent’s House used to host dis­plays such as art ex­hi­bi­tions by pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school stu­dents and I would like to see the pub­lic ar­eas at Pres­i­dent’s House opened up to fa­cil­i­tate en­deav­ours such as book club meet­ings and pro­grammes to in­tro­duce young peo­ple to mu­sic.”

It’s all part of her plans to mod­ernise the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, which she said will en­tail an archive of pres­i­den­tial his­to­ry that will not on­ly aid those in of­fice but al­so the pub­lic.

Kan­ga­loo al­so tout­ed the mod­el pro­vid­ed by the steel­band move­ment in its prepa­ra­tions for Car­ni­val. She said the dis­ci­pline and struc­ture the pa­n­yard brings in­to the lives of the na­tion’s young peo­ple in the build-up to Car­ni­val is one of the most ef­fec­tive youth delin­quen­cy pre­ven­tion pro­grammes, and she will aim to have dis­cus­sions with those stake­hold­ers to try to repli­cate such a mod­el year-round.

Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo’s in­au­gu­ra­tion was at­tend­ed by scores of am­bas­sadors and diplo­mats, in­clud­ing US Am­bas­sador to T&T Can­dace Bond and Chi­nese Am­bas­sador Fang Qiu. Among the many guests was Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo’s 94-year-old moth­er Bar­bara, who saw her daugh­ter sworn-in as this coun­try’s sec­ond fe­male and sev­enth Pres­i­dent.

Ear­li­er, as the armed forces with their sax­o­phones and drums closed the Paula-Mae Weekes era, they ush­ered in a new one un­der over­cast skies and cool con­di­tions. They al­so wel­comed in a new com­man­der-in-chief.

In rit­u­al­is­tic fash­ion and timed to mil­i­tary pre­ci­sion, the then Pres­i­dent-elect and her hus­band Ker­wyn Gar­cia ar­rived, fol­lowed by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and out­go­ing Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes.

South­er­naires choir ser­e­nad­ed their new Pres­i­dent, who is from San Fer­nan­do, with Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo en­joy­ing their ren­di­tion of Melanie Hud­son’s I Will Al­ways Be There For You. By 10.20 am, she was tak­ing her oath of of­fice and then in­spect­ing the guard.

Kan­ga­loo will serve her first term as pres­i­dent un­til 2028.