While mak­ing an ar­gu­ment yes­ter­day in sup­port of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s de­ci­sion to nom­i­nate Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo for the po­si­tion of Pres­i­dent, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so con­firmed they had for­ward­ed her name to the Par­lia­ment.

PM Row­ley’s move al­so means that he is re­ject­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ nom­i­nee—Is­rael Khan, SC.

It is now, there­fore, a fait ac­com­pli that Mrs Kan­ga­loo is the Pres­i­dent-elect of Trinidad and To­ba­go and will suc­ceed out­go­ing Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes.

Pri­or to PM Row­ley’s de­c­la­ra­tion, how­ev­er, the main is­sue with the PNM’s choice of Mrs Kan­ga­loo from sev­er­al sec­tors of so­ci­ety lay in her close al­liance to the PNM over the years, in­clud­ing her cur­rent ap­point­ment as Sen­ate Pres­i­dent, since there is noth­ing il­le­gal con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly about the PM’s ac­tion in mak­ing the nom­i­na­tion.

Truth be told, how­ev­er, nei­ther the UNC nor the PNM has the moral au­thor­i­ty to use can­di­dates’ af­fil­i­a­tions to re­spec­tive par­ties as a hin­drance to pres­i­den­tial can­di­da­cy. This is be­cause both par­ties have pre­vi­ous­ly of­fered up can­di­dates whose al­le­giance to ei­ther red (PNM) or yel­low (UNC) was well known.

In fact, PM Row­ley yes­ter­day con­firmed that while the PNM did not sup­port the UNC’s choice of Arthur NR Robin­son in 1997, he used the cloak of the Elec­toral Col­lege’s se­cret bal­lot to vote for Mr Robin­son.

Of course, Robin­son went on to serve with­out any ran­cour, save when he made what many la­belled a con­tro­ver­sial call to give Patrick Man­ning’s PNM’s the ad­van­tage fol­low­ing the 18-18 gen­er­al elec­tion tie in 2001.

More im­por­tant­ly, how­ev­er, this meant PM Row­ley would have bro­ken ranks with the PNM dur­ing that vote for the now-de­ceased Robin­son. But isn’t this re­al­ly how such crit­i­cal votes should go? Shouldn’t politi­cians put aside all par­ti­san­ship and vote sim­ply for the best can­di­date in the in­ter­est of the coun­try for one of the high­est of­fices of the land?

While sad to say, the method­ol­o­gy of the PNM and UNC are part­ly re­spon­si­ble for the co­nun­drum sur­round­ing the ap­point­ment.

For sev­er­al years now, par­ty pol­i­tics in T&T has gone down a slip­pery slope of neg­a­tiv­i­ty. It has been ad­ver­sar­i­al and di­vi­sive, with the main lead­ers of­ten spew­ing hate to­wards one an­oth­er and en­cour­ag­ing par­ty faith­ful to do the same. Iron­i­cal­ly, it is the nas­ti­ness of the pol­i­tics which has seen many in­di­vid­u­als high­ly qual­i­fied for the pres­i­den­cy turn­ing down the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve our coun­try.

So, in­stead of dis­cussing the suit­abil­i­ty of the two clear­ly high­ly qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als now be­fore us, it has come down to a po­lit­i­cal­ly in­fused PNM ver­sus UNC dog­fight.

How­ev­er, one thing is clear. While what is cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly le­gal, it is clear cit­i­zens no longer trust the po­lit­i­cal par­ties’ in­volve­ment in the process to find cit­i­zens wor­thy of as­cend­ing to the seat of the Pres­i­dent.

In this sce­nario, it is clear that con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form re­gard­ing the ap­point­ment of a Pres­i­dent, whether as the of­fice cur­rent­ly holds or broach­ing the prospect of an Ex­ec­u­tive Pres­i­dent, should be vis­it­ed.

In ad­vanc­ing this ar­gu­ment, we of­fer that the par­ties put for­ward can­di­dates, but the cit­i­zen­ry be giv­en the right to make the fi­nal choice via a vote.