Paula-Mae Weekes is the sixth and cur­rent Pres­i­dent of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

She took of­fice on March 19, 2018, and at that time, be­came the first fe­male pres­i­dent of Trinidad and To­ba­go. To the peo­ple of this coun­try, her in­au­gu­ra­tion was a joy­ous af­fair.

It sparked a feel­ing of hope when a time of doom and gloom dom­i­nat­ed the news cy­cle.

One year on, how is she ad­just­ing to the of­fice and what does it all mean to her?

She sat down with CNC3 an­chor Hema Ramkissoon to give an ac­count of her first 12 months, how the role has im­pact­ed her per­son­al life and pro­vide in­sight in­to sev­er­al na­tion­al top­ics in­clud­ing our sys­tem of gov­er­nance and gave tips on how to im­prove our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

Q: Now, you’re ap­proach­ing, we’re at the one-year mark. I’m sure there have been lessons, even sur­pris­es. How would you de­scribe your last year in of­fice and of our life which has changed?

A: My last year in of­fice has been in­ter­est­ing, chal­leng­ing, grat­i­fy­ing, frus­trat­ing, some­times all in one day. Re­cent­ly, ex­hil­a­rat­ing.

You use a lot of in­ter­est­ing ad­jec­tives. Let’s talk about in­ter­est­ing, chal­leng­ing and grat­i­fy­ing. Iden­ti­fy the points for me.

In­ter­est­ing in that even though I thought I un­der­stood what the work of the Pres­i­dent en­tailed, it turns out that my knowl­edge was very much in­com­plete and im­per­fect. So it has been in­ter­est­ing to learn of the var­i­ous facets that have come up in the one year and I’m sure there are more to go. Frus­trat­ing, be­cause there are such se­vere lim­i­ta­tions as to what I am able to ac­com­plish giv­en the pow­ers of the of­fice and I am al­so very both­ered about the lack of in­for­ma­tion and ed­u­ca­tion our pub­lic has about the role of the Pres­i­dent and you don’t al­ways get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plain your­self so you can be left a bit put out.

So that’s in­ter­est­ing. Chal­leng­ing?

Well, this is a 24/7 job so un­like my pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tion where I worked Mon­day to Fri­day and could put things aside on a week­end, that doesn’t hap­pen here. So that the chal­lenge is to keep go­ing and the chal­lenge is that for me who has al­ways been a pret­ty pri­vate per­son, has to now be­come an open book.

And the grat­i­fy­ing part?

The grat­i­fy­ing part is hav­ing met so many of our cit­i­zens to find out that so many of them are com­mit­ted. They are ea­ger to work with you, they are ea­ger to know what they can do and es­pe­cial­ly deal­ing with the lit­tle chil­dren. I love when they come to vis­it.

You know you’ve served on the bench, and now (hold) the pres­i­den­cy. You’ve iden­ti­fied the chal­leng­ing, the grat­i­fy­ing and the in­ter­est­ing parts of your job. How dif­fi­cult has the ad­just­ment been, now be­com­ing an open book?

It has been quite dif­fi­cult be­cause now I can go nowhere un­chap­er­oned which I find very ir­ri­tat­ing but it comes with the ter­ri­to­ry. A friend warned me when I was con­sult­ing with him about whether or not I should go for­ward with this pres­i­den­cy. He said, “bear in mind that every­body is go­ing to want a lit­tle piece of you,” and I sort of brushed that off and it has turned out to be true and some­times there is not that much more left in a giv­en time-frame to give.

You know when you talk about shar­ing any part of you, do you main­tain any pri­va­cy at all? How do you find that bal­ance?

I have not found it and I don’t know. I’m not sure it can be found. So, for ex­am­ple, a sim­ple thing; if I have to go to the den­tist, peo­ple have to know. I have to be tak­en by about 10 men in cars and vans. There is noth­ing that is pri­vate and be­cause I live at home, I have se­cu­ri­ty em­bed­ded at my quar­ters and so not even there do I have my pri­va­cy, I have to dress prop­er­ly as I walk about my own home.

We re­cent­ly cel­e­brat­ed In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day and there was a theme, #bal­ance­for­bet­ter. It dom­i­nat­ed our head­lines, it was every­one’s slo­gan. What does bal­ance look like from your per­spec­tive?

It looks like try­ing to achieve eq­ui­ty which is more than sim­ple equal­i­ty. I had oc­ca­sion to at­tend a func­tion that was held by the De­fence Force and the Chief of De­fence told a sto­ry about the fact that af­ter a cer­tain num­ber of years of ser­vice, ser­vice­men and women were giv­en a wrist­watch and that on the first oc­ca­sion that women were part of those re­ceiv­ing the awards. There were six women and they went out and bought ex­act­ly the same wrist­watch for all of the re­cip­i­ents. The women did not par­tic­u­lar­ly ap­pre­ci­ate them be­cause they were large and mas­cu­line and it was an im­me­di­ate de­pre­ci­a­tion of the fact that, yes we are all equal be­cause we all got the watch but eq­ui­ty takes us a step fur­ther: that we need things to be equalised but with a sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the dif­fer­ences that there wouldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly be for gen­der.

You know when we first start­ed the in­ter­view, you spoke about so­ci­ety’s ex­pec­ta­tions of what this role is sup­posed to be. How do we bridge that gap? How do we in­form them that there are lim­i­ta­tions to your of­fice?

One of my am­bi­tions, if I may call it that, is to have a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme about the role and func­tions of the Pres­i­dent. Be­cause we have ab­solute­ly no ded­i­cat­ed bud­get for that pur­pose, it takes some time to fig­ure out how best to do it and how it is to be fund­ed but I think in­for­ma­tion is need­ed. It is need­ed in the schools. I think the Pres­i­dent needs more in­ter­ac­tion with school chil­dren, not just when they come to pay a cour­tesy call but by find­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to speak with them and to ex­plain to them what the Pres­i­dent can and can’t do at an age-ap­pro­pri­ate lev­el and then we have gen­er­al ed­u­ca­tion for adults. Peo­ple write to me every sin­gle day ask­ing me to do things that I can­not do, for ex­am­ple, get them a house, get them a job. One gen­tle­man wrote to me and asked me to or­der the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to stop do­ing par­tic­u­lar things and so those are things that I can’t do and peo­ple have no clue. So I think on­ly pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion is go­ing to im­prove this.

In your in­au­gur­al ad­dress, you de­fined your role as a hum­ble first ser­vant with a man­date to ren­der ser­vice with en­thu­si­asm. How do you be­come an agent of change?

Have I been an agent of change? I do not hon­est­ly think that I can say so. It has not been for want of try­ing but at the end of the day, my am­bit is re­al­ly lim­it­ed. Peo­ple ask me all the time to make pub­lic state­ments on this, that and the oth­er, not un­der­stand­ing that the Pres­i­dent doesn’t speak with­out a con­text and if the con­text doesn’t af­ford one the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak on a par­tic­u­lar sub­ject, it doesn’t hap­pen and so I think there are lim­its to the change that the Pres­i­dent can bring about. What I hope is to im­part to the gen­er­al pub­lic and if I can do it at the end of my term I think I would then qual­i­fy my­self as an agent of change: the con­cept of du­ty, the con­cept of com­mit­ment, of ci­vil­i­ty and, last but not least, of ap­pro­pri­ate­ness.

In­ter­view con­tin­ues on page A7

Q: You know con­sti­tu­tion­al change has been a cry for many, many years. A con­sti­tu­tion is a liv­ing, breath­ing en­ti­ty. It ef­fec­tive­ly serves the need of the peo­ple, the so­ci­ety and the na­tion as a whole. In 2019, is the Con­sti­tu­tion serv­ing the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go?

A: Our Con­sti­tu­tion is nev­er go­ing to serve the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go with­out the co­op­er­a­tion of the peo­ple. You can have as many leg­isla­tive struc­tures as you wish. If the peo­ple are not on board, if the peo­ple are not com­mit­ted to the ideals, we will get no fur­ther than we are now. So yes there can be sev­er­al use­ful changes made to the Con­sti­tu­tion but I don’t know if that will nec­es­sar­i­ly bring the an­swers or the mag­ic that peo­ple seem to think it will. I think that we need to ef­fect a change in the at­ti­tude of the pop­u­la­tion and that I think will on­ly come when there is a change in the at­ti­tude of peo­ple in lead­er­ship in all spheres of en­deav­our.

Q: It’s in­ter­est­ing that you say that. In your in­au­gu­ra­tion speech, you spoke about the light that we must bring and re­turn to the na­tion. You iden­ti­fied a few ex­am­ples in your speech. Many peo­ple be­lieve in this time our coun­try is fac­ing some of its dark­est times. Has that light in­ten­si­fied? Are we ca­pa­ble of bet­ter?

A: Well un­doubt­ed­ly we are ca­pa­ble of bet­ter. With re­spect of the light in­ten­si­fy­ing, I think every­body wants some­body else to shine this light. The light will on­ly in­ten­si­fy if we all un­der­stand our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be it and share it. So I have met many oth­er won­der­ful peo­ple since I have come in­to of­fice, each of them shin­ing his or her own light in an area. We just need more of that. We have to un­der­stand that we are to be the light and we are to shine it. Each in­di­vid­ual has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Q: When we look at our lead­ers in any sphere, whether it be church, whether it be po­lit­i­cal of­fice, whether it be a prin­ci­pal, are our lead­ers ca­pa­ble of lead­ing bet­ter?

A: Well there must al­ways be room for im­prove­ment. Yes, I think that all lead­ers can lead bet­ter.

Q: You know, you ref­er­enced C.S. Lewis that would sug­gest a deep ground­ing in your faith. How has your faith shaped your be­lief sys­tem and your lead­er­ship style?

A: All through, all the way. I grew up in the church. Of course, I had my decade of be­ing a rene­gade, but the ten­ta­cles of the church go far and wide and I’m sure that my moth­er was pray­ing on my head every day that I would get back to the deep com­mit­ment and show up every Sun­day which has hap­pened now. I would not have ac­cept­ed the chal­lenge that this job is with­out the deep faith that I have be­cause def­i­nite­ly this is not a job for the faint-heart­ed or to be achieved by nor­mal hu­man en­deav­our. One cer­tain­ly needs the Almighty to put a hand in. And as for my lead­er­ship style, I try to make sure that I walk with in­tegri­ty, that I’m hon­est. I’m straight­for­ward and if I may say so, for years I read the bib­li­cal pas­sage about sea­son­ing your words with salt and I thought that salt meant pep­per and then I learnt it meant grace. So I have soft­ened in a form, oth­ers will say they don’t see it but I am go­ing along.

Q: You’ve served many, many years of your life in the Ju­di­cia­ry. In fact, I was look­ing at the pic­ture on the wall there. It seems as though the Ju­di­cia­ry is un­der fire. Al­le­ga­tions are fly­ing back and forth and there are lines of di­vi­sion amongst your for­mer col­leagues. Does this state of af­fairs both­er you?

A: Be­yond both­ered. It grieves me. Un­like many of the by­standers that are just look­ing on, I was there for 20 years. I know per­son­al­ly every­body who is in­volved in this present thing, from the point-of-view from the Ju­di­cia­ry and I’m very, very sad­dened by the fact that right now there does not ap­pear to be in the Ju­di­cia­ry, that love­ly spir­it of ca­ma­raderie and trust and re­ly­ing on each oth­er that I per­son­al­ly en­joyed when I got there. It was there once, it was very strong and it was a won­der­ful thing. And so the com­par­i­son is some­thing that trou­bles me deeply and I re­al­ly feel par­tic­u­lar­ly for the young, new judges who have stepped in­to this im­broglio.

Q: Is it go­ing to rise like a phoenix from the ash­es?

A: One can on­ly hope. You know they say that how­ev­er far you go even­tu­al­ly you will reach bot­tom. We hope that we don’t have to reach there and af­ter that, we can on­ly hope that we will rise.

Q: You still teach in Sun­day school. What did you learn from both ex­pe­ri­ences? What did you learn from stu­dents of the law school and from your Sun­day school ex­pe­ri­ences?

A: Our Sun­day school goes from ages three to fif­teen but I teach the con­fir­ma­tion class so I’m deal­ing with chil­dren who are pret­ty much 11 to 13 and I have learned that there is tremen­dous po­ten­tial in each child and that when we learn to see the po­ten­tial in each child dif­fer­ent­ly and we don’t ap­ply the same mea­sure of suc­cess to each child, that we re­al­ly have the most won­der­ful seedlings for na­tion­al growth.

Q: You miss the abil­i­ty, teach­ing seems to be very close to your heart. You’ve ref­er­enced it many times in our con­ver­sa­tions. Do you miss the abil­i­ty to teach at the law school?

A: I do and al­so in my very short in­car­na­tion as a pri­vate en­tre­pre­neur, al­so taught cours­es in var­i­ous as­pects of law. I love teach­ing.

Q: I read a quote that was as­cribed to you where you said, “For six years I taught the course, Ethics, Rights and Re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in the le­gal pro­fes­sion. I was dis­ap­point­ed to find that a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the stu­dents among them the schol­ar­ship win­ners and high achiev­ers were lazy, dis­hon­est and they had a sense of en­ti­tle­ment. They want­ed max­i­mum re­turn for min­i­mum ef­fort. It was a clear fail­ing of char­ac­ter that has car­ried over from our ed­u­ca­tion- from their ear­ly in­ter­ac­tion with the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.” How do we even be­gin to ad­dress this fail­ing sys­tem to build bet­ter char­ac­ters?

A: We start in ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion, right? And there are some in­puts that are need­ed there, lessons but you see, I will tell you one of my prob­lems with the law school is that ethics was taught as a course and so it was some­thing to learn of the prin­ci­ples, re­gur­gi­tate them in the ex­am, pass, for­get and move on. There was talk for many years of in­cor­po­rat­ing as­pects of ethics in­to every course in the law school. So as you did the law of ev­i­dence, you would have some ethics in there. So that it be­came some­thing that wasn’t sim­ply and ex­am­inable sub­ject but rather some­thing that would in­fil­trate your think­ing on the whole as you prac­tised and I think that is what is need­ed across the board. So that ethics needs to be taught in ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion, in an age-ap­pro­pri­ate form, in pri­ma­ry school, in sec­ondary school be­cause that’s how we learnt it when we were small.

Q: There was a call for manda­to­ry ser­vice. When you talk about du­ty, com­mit­ment, do you think that’s go­ing to make any dif­fer­ence in the type of cit­i­zens we’ve cre­at­ed?

A: Not with­out oth­er in­ter­ven­tions, I don’t think so.

Q: You know, in your in­au­gu­ra­tion speech you ref­er­ence C.S. Lewis and Pollyan­na, what book are you read­ing now? Or do you have time to read now?

A: Prepar­ing for East­er by the C.S. Lewis and then I love a gory, psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller so I’m read­ing Say You Are Sor­ry by Karen Rose.

Q: In terms of the prin­ci­ples that you’ve at­tached to all of your read­ings to all of your ti­tles, what prin­ci­ples have in­flu­enced you the most?

A: I think they need to op­er­ate with scrupu­lous in­tegri­ty. I think grat­i­tude, pa­tience, the one I’ve been work­ing on for years with­out much head­way. What else? I think faith­ful­ness to cause and pur­pose. I think that’s a tall enough or­der. There are prob­a­bly a few oth­ers that I can’t think of right away.

Q: You know you men­tion the Sun­day school and in your ini­tial set of in­ter­views you spoke about the bonds with your fam­i­ly that ex­ists and that work-life bal­ance. What ad­vice do you have for peo­ple like my­self who find that the most chal­leng­ing task? Is it even pos­si­ble to achieve?

A: It’s dif­fi­cult when you try to bal­ance it. Un­doubt­ed­ly a few noses are go­ing to be put out of joint. For ex­am­ple, as I said, this job is a sev­en days a week but when there are Sun­day en­gage­ments it means that I can’t teach Sun­day school, I can’t go to church and what would have been the frame of my Sun­day is to­tal­ly af­fect­ed. So that in try­ing to achieve work-life bal­ance, I’ve tak­en a po­si­tion now that I’ve spent 2018 ob­serv­ing and learn­ing that I will not ac­cept Sun­day en­gage­ments un­less I think it ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary or ex­treme­ly ben­e­fi­cial. Lots of peo­ple have their events on a Sun­day so they are not go­ing to be pleased but work-life bal­ance has to be struck.

Q: What ad­vice do you have for the next gen­er­a­tion? You talk about your time as a teacher, even still try­ing to teach through Sun­day school. There’s a brain drain. Peo­ple are dis­en­chant­ed. Young peo­ple are seek­ing op­tions abroad. The eco­nom­ic pie is shrink­ing. The crime sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues to dom­i­nate. We are in dark times. Why should they stay and what do you want to tell them?

A: Trinidad and To­ba­go is the on­ly place you won’t be an alien. You may be alien­at­ed but you’re not an alien. No­body has a greater vest­ed in­ter­est in in­vest­ing here in Trinidad and To­ba­go than the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go and I have been con­cerned for some time about the fact that many of our chil­dren are al­most pass­ing through and feel no re­al con­nec­tion to this land and so I think I told you that it was ex­hil­a­rat­ing at this time. I think I have found a ve­hi­cle. I am be­gin­ning a pro­gramme called Cit­i­zen True. We have to run a pi­lot of course so we will learn the lessons which we hope to roll out to per­sons in that eleven to thir­teen age group be­cause the pro­fes­sion­als tell us that is the time that these lessons would best take root and I hope to find blue­print for cre­at­ing com­mit­ted cit­i­zens and I think that that would go a long way. So I want to tell them hold on, you be­long here, you need to do the work, it’s no­body else’s du­ty but your own and bet­ter days will def­i­nite­ly have to come but we have to make them.

Q: I men­tioned con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form ear­li­er and you said we can change it how many times, it comes down to our peo­ple is­sue. The West­min­ster sys­tem is by na­ture ad­ver­sar­i­al. There is a per­cep­tion, politi­cians go in to win, some lose and there is a five-year cy­cle. How do we change that? How do we get peo­ple to see the big­ger pic­ture as op­posed to a five-year win, out, vot­ing you in, vot­ing you out? Can that change?

A: We can change that. We can get an­oth­er sys­tem. Once it’s pop­u­lat­ed by the same in­di­vid­u­als with the same mind­sets, we will have the same prob­lems. There are many oth­er coun­tries with dif­fer­ent sys­tems, cer­tain things might work bet­ter but at the end of the day, it is their at­ti­tude. That car­ries the show, not the sys­tem.