Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Al­ready marred by con­tro­ver­sy, the saga con­tin­ued at the 2020 Pres­i­dent Medal Award cer­e­mo­ny on Mon­day as Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes re­vealed a schol­ar sent her a let­ter con­tain­ing a threat ear­li­er this year. It has since prompt­ed her to ap­peal to par­ents and teach­ers to in­stil emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence in chil­dren as part of their all-around de­vel­op­ment.

Dur­ing her speech af­ter pre­sent­ing the awards, Pres­i­dent Weekes re­vealed she re­ceived an email in Jan­u­ary from the un­named schol­ar com­plain­ing of “feel­ing dis­re­gard­ed be­cause it had been over nine months since awardees had been an­nounced but no fur­ther com­mu­ni­ca­tion had been forth­com­ing.”

She said she un­der­stood the im­pa­tient and “im­pul­sive­ness of youth” but ex­pressed her sur­prise at a threat con­tained in the let­ter.

“The au­thor, while show­ing a clear un­der­stand­ing of the process—that is that my of­fice had to await no­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tio—urged us to fol­low up with the min­istry, and now here comes the kick­er, and I quote, or else I will be forced to go to the me­dia about the treat­ment I have re­ceived,” she said.

“I thought, why that tone? Why did the writer con­sid­er it ap­pro­pri­ate to in­clude the omi­nous, ‘or else’? Where did the writer learn that such an ap­proach was ac­cept­able?”

Pres­i­dent Weekes said her of­fice was no stranger to dis­grun­tled let­ters from all sec­tions of the coun­try but not­ed the need for re­spect for pub­lic of­fice and of­fi­cials. She said one of her favourite writ­ers who fre­quent­ly penned her of­fice was ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh for his ex­er­cise of this eti­quette.

“Dr Kublals­ingh could con­duct a mas­ter­class in re­spect of, re­spect for and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with a pub­lic of­fice,” she said.

It was this les­son, she said, par­ents and teach­ers need­ed to in­stil in the younger gen­er­a­tion.

“While we must at­tempt to pro­duce as­sertive, con­fi­dent stu­dents, not afraid to ques­tion the sta­tus quo or speak truth to pow­er—hould we not al­so be rais­ing tem­per­ate and tol­er­ant young per­sons who when faced with dis­ap­point­ment, chal­lenges or frus­tra­tion, re­al or per­ceived, rather than de­scend to bul­ly­ing, ma­nip­u­la­tion or in­tim­i­da­tion rise to treat in­di­vid­u­als and of­fices with due re­gard even as they fear­less­ly pur­sue their jus­ti­fi­able cause,” she said.

“I leave these mat­ters for your con­sid­er­a­tion at some lat­er time.”

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