New­ly mint­ed Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo made a most en­dear­ing en­try in­to a new phase of her pub­lic life yes­ter­day, when she pledged to open up her of­fice and the space it oc­cu­pies to the gen­er­al pub­lic.

More point­ed­ly, Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo aims to make the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent’s space a hub for the in­tel­lec­tu­al, cul­tur­al and artis­tic de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try’s youth.

The sev­enth Pres­i­dent of T&T’s plan can come at no bet­ter time in the coun­try’s his­to­ry, since all cit­i­zens can un­doubt­ed­ly ad­mit that the cur­rent lev­els of youth vi­o­lence in schools and young adults’ in­creas­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in gang ac­tiv­i­ty and crime are alarm­ing.

The Pres­i­dent’s plan to col­lab­o­rate with com­mu­ni­ties to ex­plore and ad­vo­cate for a means by which young peo­ple can be “steered away from the al­lure of an­ti­so­cial be­hav­iours,” is, there­fore, al­ready a lofty goal for which we are cer­tain she will have the cit­i­zen­ry’s full sup­port.

More im­por­tant­ly, how­ev­er, was Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo’s im­me­di­ate of­fer­ing of an olive branch to those who did not sup­port her nom­i­na­tion to the coun­try’s high­est of­fice.

In an ob­vi­ous call to the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, who made them­selves vis­i­bly ab­sent from yes­ter­day’s in­au­gu­ra­tion, Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo, draw­ing wis­dom from one of late ca­lyp­son­ian Mer­chant’s songs, said: “’Let us for­get spites and grudges and con­cen­trate’; and to ‘come let us sit and try to re­late’.”

In do­ing so, she has opened the door to the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with her to fix the ills of so­ci­ety. Her promise to do so with­out ac­ri­mo­ny, bit­ter­ness or shout­ing, be­cause “there is al­ready too much shout­ing go­ing on in our coun­try to­day,” are traits we hope she will pass on to our politi­cians cur­rent­ly in Par­lia­ment.

In­deed, even as the Prime Min­is­ter, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Chief Jus­tice and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions are in­volved in a pub­lic spat over the state of the DPP’s Of­fice and its abil­i­ty to pros­e­cute crit­i­cal mat­ters, we hope those of­fice­hold­ers present at yes­ter­day’s event, and those who ab­sent­ed them­selves, will take note that it is time for a new dis­pen­sa­tion where the peo­ple they rep­re­sent are put first.

The Pres­i­dent is lead­ing the way by en­deav­our­ing to de­mys­ti­fy her Of­fice by mak­ing it more ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic and al­so mak­ing her­self avail­able to one Stan­dard Four class at the San Fer­nan­do Girls’ Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School now do­ing a project to height­en aware­ness about the Pres­i­dent’s role in T&T.

Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo ad­mits to not be­ing naïve to the strug­gles she will en­counter in try­ing to break through bar­ri­ers to achieve some of her goals. We cer­tain­ly hope she is ready for this task.

In­deed, cit­i­zens will be ful­ly aware of the pit­falls of such an ap­proach, hav­ing heard such promis­es from pre­vi­ous pres­i­dents, on­ly to find that the door­way to such a promised land quick­ly shut once the of­fice hold­ers be­came in­volved in the en­trap­ments of the of­fice it­self.

As such, we hope that the new Pres­i­dent will stick to her main pledge to be­come the pub­lic Diplo­mat-in-Chief and to “ad­vo­cat­ing for bet­ter con­di­tions, for bet­ter arrange­ments, for bet­ter plat­forms, and for bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties for all” and to “fight to the end to make the Of­fice work bet­ter for all of us.”

God’s speed Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo.