RYAN BA­CHOO

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

It is Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes’ fi­nal day in of­fice. T&T’s first fe­male pres­i­dent opt­ed to serve on­ly one term, a de­ci­sion that was made even be­fore she was in­au­gu­rat­ed in 2018. In more ways than one, Pres­i­dent Weekes cre­at­ed and faced his­to­ry.

On the back of a mer­it list fi­as­co in 2021 that came to de­fine her term in of­fice, she sur­vived a his­tor­i­cal im­peach­ment vote in Oc­to­ber of that year, the first for a pres­i­dent in this coun­try, which she said was the most chal­leng­ing part of her pres­i­den­cy. She had many re­ac­tions over the pe­ri­od, she said, “From high ir­ri­ta­tion to im­pa­tience, to re­al­ly hav­ing to bite my tongue and frus­tra­tion at not be­ing able to say all that I could say in the mat­ter...”

Mere days be­fore demit­ting of­fice, Pres­i­dent Weekes sat down with Guardian Me­dia at her of­fice at the Pres­i­dent’s House to re­flect on the last five years.

The out­go­ing Pres­i­dent said that she was hap­py to come to the end of her term which had its highs and lows, but that she was very grat­i­fied by what she had done. The most grat­i­fy­ing as­pect of it be­ing her in­ter­ac­tions with the youth.

On the pub­lic’s per­cep­tion that she was not warm, Weekes con­fessed that it might be en­tire­ly true, but “I am not pre­pared to be what I am not to please oth­er peo­ple.” For Weekes, it has al­ways been “what you see is what you get” with her.

We have picked out some ex­cerpts from her in­ter­view with jour­nal­ist/an­chor Ryan Ba­choo.

Q: In re­flect­ing, what have you made of this en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence as pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic?

A: Well, it was my last and great­est work of pub­lic ser­vice, and like the ones that went be­fore it was in­ter­est­ing, and had its highs and lows, but at the end of the day, I am very grat­i­fied by what I would have done and what I have ex­pe­ri­enced in my tenure. I say I’m hap­py to come to the end of it be­cause I al­so knew my 65th year would have been my last work­ing, and so, in­deed, it is.

What has been most grat­i­fy­ing for you over the last five years serv­ing in the high­est of­fice in the land?

 First­ly, deal­ing with our youth. In 2019, I es­tab­lished a youth de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme called Cit­i­zen True, and we had their grad­u­a­tion just last Sat­ur­day (March 11). And so, fol­low­ing these chil­dren that we met when they were in Form One all the way through was re­al­ly pleas­ing at the end of the day to see how they had de­vel­oped and to see how their sense of cit­i­zen­ship had grown. For some of them, from nil. I al­ways en­joyed deal­ing with oth­er young peo­ple be­cause in our school tours we had chil­dren from as young as the ear­ly child­hood cen­tres. So, I think, over­all deal­ing with the youth was the most grat­i­fy­ing as­pect of my time here.

Was the im­peach­ment vote the most chal­leng­ing part of your pres­i­den­cy?

 Yes, in­deed, it was the most chal­leng­ing. I think when you ac­cept pub­lic of­fice, you hope that things will be smooth but if you are re­al­is­tic, you re­alise you open your­self up to many a chal­lenge. I had a va­ri­ety of re­ac­tions over the pe­ri­od. From high ir­ri­ta­tion to im­pa­tience, to re­al­ly hav­ing to bite my tongue and frus­tra­tion at not be­ing able to say all that I could say in the mat­ter, but then there is a greater du­ty. Peo­ple...not on­ly the man in the street, but peo­ple in high of­fice have to have con­fi­dence that what comes here re­mains. So de­spite the many, many temp­ta­tions on this and oth­er is­sues to speak about what took place and what was said at Pres­i­dent’s House, it is my pol­i­cy that that does not hap­pen. It shakes the con­fi­dence of peo­ple who of­ten need to re­sort to the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent to ex­change ideas or to look for so­lu­tions. At the end of the day, I did what I thought was right and what I had to do, and his­to­ry will speak for it­self.

Af­ter five years of oc­cu­py­ing the of­fice of pres­i­dent, what type of out­look do you see for Trinidad and To­ba­go?

 If you hear­ken back to my in­au­gur­al ad­dress, you would re­mem­ber that I am for­ev­er Pollyan­na. So, I have an op­ti­mistic out­look be­cause I have had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to take a mea­sure of the cal­i­bre of peo­ple we have in T&T, to con­firm my view that there are many pa­tri­ots, who, if giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty, will in­deed do a lot for the coun­try. Of course, as things stand, one must be a bit con­cerned. There are many so­cial is­sues, crime, of course, be­ing among them that makes one trou­bled with the state of the coun­try. But if you ask me if I’m op­ti­mistic? Yes, in the face of it all, I am.

Do you fear we have got­ten to a point where the best of us are now un­will­ing to serve in pub­lic of­fice be­cause of pol­i­tics?

Well, I can tell you that I, per­son­al­ly, in hav­ing this of­fice, ap­proach many, many per­sons to serve in pub­lic of­fice have had them de­cline on the grounds that they don’t like, to use their words, the pol­i­tics of the coun­try to­day, and they are not pre­pared to serve. So peo­ple tell you, if it were not for the pol­i­tics, I would have loved to do ser­vice in this way but giv­en what is go­ing on I do not wish to serve. So, I don’t know if I will say the best, but I can tell you from per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence that many per­sons that I thought would make ad­mirable and wor­thy of­fice hold­ers have de­clined be­cause of the at­mos­phere.

Were you a lit­tle bit dis­ap­point­ed that peo­ple didn’t see you more as a peo­ple’s pres­i­dent?

No. I’ll tell you this. Be­fore I had my in­au­gu­ra­tion, I was in con­tact with a PR per­son deal­ing with im­age, and she kept talk­ing about how I should give all these in­ter­views to be hu­man­ised. I said, but I’m hu­man al­ready, and I don’t un­der­stand why this need for the pub­lic to know all sorts of per­son­al, and to my mind, ir­rel­e­vant de­tails about me. To me, what you should be con­cerned about a pres­i­dent com­ing in­to of­fice—Is the per­son knowl­edge­able? Does the per­son have a proven track record? Does the per­son re­flect as a per­son of in­tegri­ty? So I have heard peo­ple say I am not warm. I have to con­fess that might be en­tire­ly true, but I am not pre­pared to be what I am not to please oth­er peo­ple. So for me, it has al­ways been what you see is what you get.

How do you re­spond to the crit­ics who say you cost tax­pay­ers by liv­ing in a sep­a­rate res­i­dence?

First of all, I would say that would on­ly be a com­ment for the ill-in­formed. It has cost tax­pay­ers noth­ing ex­tra to have me live at home. There are sev­er­al rea­sons why I stayed at home. Of course, the most im­por­tant of them is that when I came to this job my moth­er was 89 years old. We have lived in our home since 1964. She had some is­sues in 2015 that com­pro­mised her mo­bil­i­ty, so know­ing every sin­gle step of our home in­clud­ing the stair­case was to me very im­por­tant to her com­fort and her se­cu­ri­ty. To pick her up and bring her here to a strange en­vi­ron­ment I thought would be a bit much, es­pe­cial­ly since I al­ways knew I was leav­ing in five years, so then with­in five years, at age 94, to have to move back to my res­i­dence. So from the very be­gin­ning when I was asked I said on the con­di­tion that I do not have to leave my home. I main­tained my home on my own dime. I re­mem­ber there was a time when there was an ar­ti­cle in the pa­per about whether or not the State paid for my house­keep­er and my gar­den­er. No, they did not. I have foot­ed the bill for every sin­gle thing in my house. And so, oth­er than I sup­posed the gas in­volved in hav­ing to be col­lect­ed sev­en min­utes away and brought here to work every day, there was no cost to the tax­pay­er.

How do you feel that a fe­male pres­i­dent will suc­ceed the first fe­male pres­i­dent?

 I think it’s won­der­ful. It will be­come par for the course so whether there is a third fe­male pres­i­dent in suc­ces­sion or whether we will re­vert to hav­ing male pres­i­dents, I think the two fe­male pres­i­dents back-to-back cer­tain­ly will place a stamp on T&T and all fields of en­deav­our. Young women will no longer be con­sid­er­ing whether male or fe­male has any­thing to do with their as­pi­ra­tions and their even­tu­al ca­reers, pro­fes­sions and lives.

If you had to tell the pub­lic any last­ing words about the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s con­tro­ver­sy that gripped your tenure, what would you like the pub­lic to know?

What I would like the pub­lic to know is that if one ap­proach­es the is­sue with an open mind, not with pre­con­ceived no­tions that you were seek­ing con­fir­ma­tion of, you will know all of the es­sen­tial and salient de­tails of what took place. Those who cared to read the state­ment I is­sued on the mat­ter, if you read it through, all of the de­tails that you need to know to un­der­stand what tran­spired and to come to some con­clu­sion are there, but peo­ple were more in­ter­est­ed in the bac­cha­nal as­pect. And the word long be­fore any state­ment was out, there were sin­is­ter and clan­des­tine things hap­pen­ing and so there are peo­ple who have nev­er changed their minds on that and, to my mind, might not have read the state­ment with the com­plete open­ness and abil­i­ty to be in­formed about what took place on the im­por­tant de­tails so I don’t wish to add any­thing to what I have al­ready said on the mat­ter.

What would be your fi­nal mes­sage to the peo­ple of T&T?

 It was an ho­n­our and priv­i­lege to serve you, and I did it to the best of my abil­i­ty. I have not lost to the Pollyan­na I came to the of­fice with and de­spite all of our chal­lenges and all of our ills, I re­main con­vinced that to­geth­er we can make Trinidad and To­ba­go the place we want it to be. We may go through some more tri­als be­fore we get there, but get there we will.

The in­ter­view, in its en­tire­ty, can be viewed on CNC3 Tele­vi­sion at 8 pm on Sun­day.