A po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist says while Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo is en­ti­tled to her feel­ings, re­cent crit­i­cism about her has noth­ing to do with her be­ing a woman.

This com­ment comes af­ter Kan­ga­loo spoke out against crit­ics who ques­tioned the im­par­tial­i­ty of her Sen­ate ap­point­ments and con­tin­ued to scru­ti­nise her po­lit­i­cal past. She even sug­gest­ed that gen­der bias un­der­lies some of the com­men­taries.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of the Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness’ Women in Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence on Tues­day, Kan­ga­loo said she of­ten won­dered whether the same dou­ble-stan­dards haven’t al­so been ap­plied to her by po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tors who, as it hap­pens, are most­ly male.  

“It makes no dif­fer­ence that I had giv­en up ac­tive pol­i­tics for a full sev­en years be­fore I was elect­ed Pres­i­dent. It makes no dif­fer­ence that, un­like a for­mer dis­tin­guished pres­i­dent, who just so hap­pened to be male, I did not move from be­ing a Cab­i­net min­is­ter one day, di­rect­ly to be­ing Pres­i­dent the next. It makes no dif­fer­ence that, in any event, our Con­sti­tu­tion specif­i­cal­ly con­tem­plates a sit­ting Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment be­com­ing Pres­i­dent,” she said.

“It makes no dif­fer­ence that, for the last 63 years, ever since In­de­pen­dence, com­men­ta­tors have in­vari­ably re­ferred to the Sen­a­tors ap­point­ed by me in ac­cor­dance with the Con­sti­tu­tion as ‘In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors’ – yet sud­den­ly, for the first time in our his­to­ry, they now re­fer to them as ‘the Pres­i­dent’s Sen­a­tors’.”

She said she ques­tioned if be­ing a woman was the rea­son for the crit­i­cism.

“I have some­times al­lowed my­self to won­der whether the dif­fer­ence in my case is that I am one of on­ly two women to have been Pres­i­dent, and whether the rea­son that the on­ly oth­er for­mer politi­cian to have be­come pres­i­dent was spared the at­tacks that have been vis­it­ed up­on me is that he was male.”

Com­ment­ing on the is­sue yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said he does not nec­es­sar­i­ly agree with the no­tion of a gen­der bias against the Pres­i­dent. How­ev­er, he said Kan­ga­loo was en­ti­tled to her opin­ion.

“Mind you, she did say that it was the male po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, right, so I sup­pose I in­clud­ed my­self in that bunch who would have been at­tacked by her. I mean, some peo­ple have queried, for in­stance, the is­sue of ge­og­ra­phy, and some peo­ple have ques­tioned the is­sue of eth­nic­i­ty and race. The Pres­i­dent had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ap­point nine sen­a­tors. Of the nine sen­a­tors, she ap­point­ed one In­do-Trinida­di­an. When peo­ple will now com­plain about the UNC ap­point­ing boards, and the boards just may have one or two Afro-Trinida­di­ans, and the ma­jor­i­ty of them be­ing In­do-Trinida­di­ans, then they can’t com­plain be­cause the Pres­i­dent has set the prece­dent,” Ra­goonath lament­ed.

How­ev­er, an­a­lyst Shane Mo­hammed said Kan­ga­loo is not the first pres­i­dent who has come from the bow­els of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty. He point­ed out that she was the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent sev­er­al years ago.  

 “I do not know what the prob­lem is. I strong­ly be­lieve that this Pres­i­dent un­der­stands her role and func­tion bet­ter than the first fe­male Pres­i­dent and she un­der­stands her role much bet­ter.”

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Maukesh Bas­deo said the nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are there to bring forth a cer­tain analy­sis with their con­tri­bu­tions.

“This is where I think that the en­tire is­sue comes head-on. When you look at some of the votes on the Sen­ate on these two spe­cif­ic pieces of leg­is­la­tion, there seems to be some sort of con­tra­dic­tion that some of the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors would have vot­ed or pro­posed amend­ments on pro­posed amend­ments and vot­ed yes on one and then vot­ed no when the Bill (Pen­sion Amend­ment) re­turned to the Sen­ate,” Bas­deo added.