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Saturday, March 1, 2025

President’s husband embraces new role

by

Ryan Bachoo
704 days ago
20230327
His Excellency Kerwyn Garcia, husband of President Christine Kangaloo, during an interview on President’s Grounds, St Ann’s, yesterday.

His Excellency Kerwyn Garcia, husband of President Christine Kangaloo, during an interview on President’s Grounds, St Ann’s, yesterday.

NICOLE DRAYTON

RYAN BA­CHOO

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

When Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo was in­au­gu­rat­ed last Mon­day at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah as this coun­try’s sev­enth Head of State, lit­tle was known about the man who sat next to her at the cer­e­mo­ny. He is now to be known as His Ex­cel­len­cy Ker­wyn Gar­cia and he has been mar­ried to Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo for the last 24 years.

Life for this pri­vate man, who has prac­ticed as an at­tor­ney in civ­il ad­vo­ca­cy ar­eas for three decades, has just tak­en a very dif­fer­ent turn.

“I’ve had a very pri­vate life and I have val­ued that pri­va­cy. One of the chal­lenges about be­ing mar­ried to the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic is that one has to yield some­times, I imag­ine more of­ten than one might like, to the need to in­ter­face with the pub­lic in re­la­tion to the du­ties that one is called up­on to per­form. I am will­ing and I hap­py to do that,” Gar­cia said in his first in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

It might be sur­pris­ing to many that Gar­cia has been able to stay out of the spot­light for such a long time. He has watched his wife serve in many dif­fer­ent roles in pub­lic ser­vice for more than two decades while his fa­ther, An­tho­ny Gar­cia, served as Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter af­ter be­ing elect­ed to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 2015 as the MP for Ari­ma.

“I mean to be quite frank I be­lieve in try­ing to do one’s best in one’s par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stances. I sup­pose you could say I try to blos­som wher­ev­er I’m plant­ed,” he said.

Gar­cia’s roots in Ari­ma keep him ground­ed and con­nect­ed with east Trinidad. He told the sto­ry of his moth­er hav­ing to get a pass to get through a Black Pow­er march in 1970 to get to the Ari­ma Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal to give birth to him. He at­tend­ed Ari­ma Boys’ Gov­ern­ment School, was bap­tised at the San­ta Rosa RC Church, and was an acolyte at the Mal­abar RC Church.

“So as Hol­ly Be­taudi­er might have said I’m Gens Arime,” he said.

Both his par­ents, as well as his sis­ter, were teach­ers. Gar­cia took a dif­fer­ent route in­to law, study­ing the first year of his de­gree at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine be­fore com­plet­ing his next two years at Cave Hill in Bar­ba­dos. As an avid crick­et fan, the pitch that sits in the mid­dle of the uni­ver­si­ty ex­cit­ed him. When he’s talk­ing about crick­et, he’s West In­di­an and boasts at Cave Hill he ei­ther watched or played cork ball crick­et every day.

Gar­cia, who en­joys read­ing books on busi­ness, must now bal­ance his pri­vate law prac­tice with his du­ties as First Gen­tle­man. His wife has made no se­cret of the fact that she wants him in­volved in many of the ini­tia­tives she pitched dur­ing her in­au­gur­al ad­dress to the na­tion, name­ly cul­ture and the arts.

“It’s go­ing to be a chal­lenge. I was say­ing to Her Ex­cel­len­cy just this morn­ing that my head is spin­ning be­cause I have all of these re­spon­si­bil­i­ties I con­tin­ue to have to dis­charge to my clients and then I have to get my head around all of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of First Gen­tle­man but Her Ex­cel­len­cy and I have al­ways sup­port­ed each oth­er 110 per cent and through­out our mar­riage and I ex­pect I will have her sup­port and she will have mine and I have no doubt we are go­ing to ease in­to this just fine,” he said.

That mu­tu­al sup­port proved im­por­tant dur­ing the tran­si­tion of pow­er this year. From the Prime Min­is­ter’s nom­i­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo, the Op­po­si­tion had ob­ject­ed to the choice as Kan­ga­loo was at the time Sen­ate Pres­i­dent.

He said: “We are hu­man be­ings, all of us, and all of us feel hurt and feel pain. I think the chal­lenge has been for us to rise above it and not just to rise above it as though it is some­thing to be brushed away and not tak­en on but to try to un­der­stand it, to try to em­brace it, and that has been our jour­ney.”

Gar­cia says they had to wel­come it “as part of the na­tion­al ta­pes­try.”


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