To­mor­row, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards will be giv­en a grand send­off. A day lat­er, his suc­ces­sor, Pres­i­dent-elect An­tho­ny Car­mona, will be wel­comed with even more fan­fare.The coun­try owes Pres­i­dent Richards a debt of grat­i­tude for his two terms of ser­vice.

Pres­i­dent Richards stood out as be­ing a down-to-earth head of state. In­deed, both he and his wife, Dr Jean Ramjohn-Richards, en­deared them­selves to the pub­lic as pa­trons of sev­er­al char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions, while they al­so con­tin­ued their work with their own char­i­ta­ble body, Max and Friends, which raised mil­lions of dol­lars for needy caus­es.

Apart from this, Pres­i­dent Richards, draw­ing on his ex­pe­ri­ence as a teacher and prin­ci­pal at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty of­fered by his high-pro­file po­si­tion to call for ini­tia­tives in the field of ed­u­ca­tion to help de­vel­op the coun­try's com­pet­i­tive­ness and its strengths in in­no­va­tion. He con­stant­ly urged di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.But for all Pres­i­dent Richards' good in­ten­tions, there were some bumpy mo­ments dur­ing his tenure.

With­out a doubt, the face of pol­i­tics has changed dras­ti­cal­ly over the last two decades or so.As head of state, the Pres­i­dent should be above pol­i­tics.In prac­tice, how­ev­er, this now ap­pears to be more or less im­pos­si­ble.On nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions dur­ing Pres­i­dent Richards' tenure, too, he was sub­ject to crit­i­cism.

The ap­point­ment of rep­re­sen­ta­tives to com­mis­sions proved a most con­tentious one dur­ing his term. The con­tro­ver­sy which dogged the ap­point­ment to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion of chair­man Fr Hen­ry Charles–now de­ceased–and of mem­bers Jef­frey Mc­Far­lane, Jus­tice Zain­ool Ho­sein, Gladys Gafoor and Lyl­la Ba­da, was one such ex­am­ple.All sub­se­quent­ly re­signed to save the face of the com­mis­sion and the Pres­i­dent.

Lat­er, Pres­i­dent Richards' de­ci­sion to fire Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair­man Nizam Mo­hammed over a state­ment he made about the eth­nic com­po­si­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice was chal­lenged in the court and Mr Mo­hammed won.Last year, Pres­i­dent Richards signed off on the con­tro­ver­sial Sec­tion 34, a move with which some sec­tors of the pop­u­la­tion found fault, while oth­ers ar­gued that it would have been ul­tra vires the Con­sti­tu­tion, as a non-ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent, for him to refuse to pro­claim it.

The new Pres­i­dent is like­ly to come un­der even clos­er scruti­ny, and the pit­falls suf­fered by Pres­i­dent Richards have made it plain that the in­cum­bent must be pro­vid­ed with am­ple, ex­pert le­gal ad­vice to avoid or min­imise em­bar­rass­ing le­gal chal­lenges or con­sti­tu­tion­al crises. While Pres­i­dent Richards stayed away from con­tentious is­sues as far as pos­si­ble, there is a sig­nif­i­cant non-po­lit­i­cal top­ic on which he could have spo­ken out but chose not to.That is the state of the his­toric of­fi­cial res­i­dence, Pres­i­dent's House.

Since he was in­au­gu­rat­ed ten years ago, Pres­i­dent Richards has nev­er lived in or held func­tions in the build­ing, which need­ed restora­tion. In the in­ter­im, it has gone from bad to worse: part of it col­lapsed three years ago and to date re­pairs have not even be­gun.The con­di­tion of the build­ing is a dis­grace, an in­sult to the head of state and a black mark against the two suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions which have done noth­ing to save it.

The build­ing sym­bol­is­es the po­si­tion of the high­est-of­fice hold­er in the land, and it would have been fit­ting if he had cham­pi­oned its cause.