Ucill Cam­bridge

Com­ments made by Pen­ne­lope Beck­les on the non-ap­point­ment of a fe­male to the Sen­ate by Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona is be­ing viewed as "pet­ty" in some quar­ters, giv­en that the Pres­i­dent re­cent­ly ap­point­ed a woman as head of the Pub­lic Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (PSC)."For the first time in the his­to­ry of our coun­try we have a woman, Dr Mar­jorie Thor­pe, hold­ing the po­si­tion of head of the PSC, and in the face of that some­one comes out and wants to give the Pres­i­dent flack for not ap­point­ing a woman to the Sen­ate.

"But more than that, the deputy chair­man is al­so a woman, Zai­da Ra­j­nauth," the source added.Thor­pe re­placed Am­bas­sador Christo­pher Thomas who held the post since 2004.Un­der sec­tion 121 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, the PSC acts as a "buffer" to in­su­late pub­lic ser­vants from un­due po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence. It is re­spon­si­ble for ap­point­ments, pro­mo­tions, trans­fers and dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion.

"You now have a woman in charge of pro­mo­tions in the Coast Guard and the Army. Where else in the world will you find that?" the source ques­tioned.The source went on to say that the Pres­i­dent in his "re­tool­ing" of the Sen­ate was not con­sid­er­ing gen­der, but was look­ing at en­gag­ing the ex­per­tise rel­e­vant to the econ­o­my, par­tic­u­lar­ly to fi­nan­cial and en­er­gy is­sues. He felt he could not have a Sen­ate with­out an en­er­gy ex­pert in­clud­ed, the source said.

The Sun­day Guardian was fur­ther in­formed that Pres­i­dent Car­mona met in­di­vid­u­al­ly with each mem­ber of the Sen­ate for two hours each, en­gag­ing them on is­sues."Which oth­er Pres­i­dent do you know to have been that metic­u­lous about his ap­point­ments?" the source ques­tioned.

About Thor­pe

Thor­pe's ca­reer in­cludes ser­vice as Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­i­ties and Gen­er­al Stud­ies at UWI, Head of the De­part­ment of Eng­lish, and Co-or­di­na­tor of the Women and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies, in ad­di­tion to be­ing lead con­sul­tant for the es­tab­lish­ment of Costaatt's Di­vi­sion of Hu­man­i­ties. She has served on UWI's Strate­gic and Plan­ning Com­mit­tee.

She has been a mem­ber of sev­er­al con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-ap­point­ed boards in­clud­ing the TT De­fence Force Com­mis­sions Board (of which she was the first-ever fe­male chair­man), Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion and Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion. Thor­pe is a for­mer di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, and a board mem­ber of Cab­i­net's 2012 Youth At Risk Com­mit­tee.

She al­so served as T&T's Am­bas­sador Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Unit­ed Na­tions, help­ing es­tab­lish the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court (ICC) moot­ed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Arthur NR Robin­son. Thor­pe was deputy di­rec­tor of the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Fund for Women (Unifem); was a top ex­ec­u­tive at the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP); and was T&T's Res­i­dent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the UNDP.

Dr Thor­pe has been re­gion­al co-or­di­na­tor for the Com­mon­wealth Writ­ers Prize, chair­man of the Ful­bright Schol­ar­ship Awards Screen­ing Com­mit­tee and vice-chair of the judges pan­el of the Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture.