Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes says al­though there were some things she was un­able to ac­com­plish dur­ing her time in of­fice, she has no re­grets.

In an in­ter­view on To­ba­go Chan­nel 5, she said it is too soon to speak about her lega­cy but she is con­fi­dent she an­swered the call to serve the coun­try.

“I said, okay, well you have five more years in you to do na­tion­al ser­vice, and that’s what I did. So, I have ab­solute­ly no re­grets. I’ve had an op­por­tu­ni­ty on­ly five peo­ple oth­er than I, up to now, have been able to do and it was a most in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ence,” she said.

Pres­i­dent Weekes said there were a few things she had hoped to progress with, in­clud­ing mak­ing the Pres­i­dent’s role more pub­lic.

“I had re­al­ly hoped that I would have been able to have whipped Pres­i­dent’s House in­to the fore­most pub­lic of­fice in the coun­try. That has not come to pass for many rea­sons, but I dare say, I think we have made some head­way. There has been some im­prove­ment,” she said.

An­oth­er short­com­ing, she ad­mit­ted, was that some of the promis­es she made in 2020 for more ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes did not come to fruition due to COVID-19 and a lack of ad­e­quate fi­nances.

“Over time, we tried to get it done, but then we had fi­nan­cial prob­lems be­cause this is an ex­pen­sive busi­ness. In the way we were think­ing of do­ing it, we could not get funds for it.

“Now, I think it would sur­prise peo­ple to know that Pres­i­dent’s House op­er­ates in terms of fi­nan­cial af­fairs just like every oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fice so, there’s a vote, we have heads. Mon­ey can on­ly be spent un­der a spe­cif­ic head and there was no head that al­lowed us to spend the amount of mon­ey we need­ed. So, I am sor­ry that I will be leav­ing of­fice with­out hav­ing got that ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme off the ground,” she said.

Pres­i­dent Weekes re­vealed that dur­ing her pres­i­den­cy she re­ceived let­ters from cit­i­zens. How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted that some of those let­ters dis­turbed her.

“I am very con­cerned, there seems to be a great deal of men­tal ill­ness and in­sta­bil­i­ty among our pop­u­la­tion if we use the num­ber of let­ters that we get and bal­ance it against the let­ters writ­ten by let me say, those who ap­pear to be ra­tio­nal on the face of it,” she said.

“There are a lot of peo­ple writ­ing me who are men­tal­ly dis­turbed, whether or not that con­di­tion has been brought about by deal­ing with these trou­bles for so long that it has de­railed them, or whether there were pre­vi­ous un­der­ly­ing prob­lems that made them un­able to cope.”

She added that there is al­so a lack of aware­ness among cit­i­zens of the roles and func­tions of the Pres­i­dent, giv­ing them ex­pec­ta­tions she was un­able to meet.

Asked about the next Pres­i­dent of T&T, Weekes said she wish­es her suc­ces­sor all the best. She al­so ex­pressed her hope for a more in­clu­sive na­tion, stat­ing that some ad­just­ments need­ed to be made.

One of her wish­es is to see a more in­clu­sive na­tion, where there is less di­vi­sion and dif­fer­ent cul­tures can be ful­ly em­braced. As an ex­am­ple, she re­called a De­fence Force pa­rade that opened with Chris­t­ian prayers when many peo­ple fol­low­ing re­li­gions such as Hin­duism and Is­lam were present.

“I think, it’s a bit of tone-deaf­ness. No­body sets out to be of­fen­sive or not to recog­nise oth­ers, but you just do what you’ve al­ways done, with­out re­al­is­ing that so­ci­ety is chang­ing. As they say, we’re get­ting woke, and so some ad­just­ments will need to be made along the way,” she said.

CoP Mer­it List fi­as­co a defin­ing mo­ment

Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes was T&T’s first fe­male Pres­i­dent but she al­so cre­at­ed some un­want­ed his­to­ry as well.

For the first time in the na­tion’s his­to­ry, there was an at­tempt to re­move a Pres­i­dent from the of­fice they oc­cu­pied.

It fol­lowed months of con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing a CoP mer­it list that was with­drawn.

As the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) be­gan its search for a new Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in 2021, al­le­ga­tions of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence brought the process in­to dis­re­pute in Sep­tem­ber. It was al­leged that there was a meet­ing on Au­gust 12th be­tween Pres­i­dent Weekes, a gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial and the then-PolSC chair Bliss Seep­er­sad at Pres­i­dent’s House to dis­cuss the mer­it list. The gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial al­leged­ly sub­mit­ted in­for­ma­tion on then-po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith. The pres­i­dent’s of­fice ac­cepts the nom­i­na­tion list be­fore sub­mit­ting it to Par­lia­ment.

Weekes found her­self em­broiled in con­tro­ver­sy when it was re­vealed a mer­it list was sub­mit­ted to her on Au­gust 11, 2021, and sub­se­quent­ly with­drawn a day lat­er.

Af­ter months of con­tro­ver­sy, the Elec­toral Col­lege met on Oc­to­ber 21, 2021, to vote on re­mov­ing Weekes from of­fice. The in­de­pen­dent bench did not sup­port the mo­tion which re­quired a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty, and it failed with a fi­nal vote of 24 in favour and 47 against. - With re­port­ing by Ryan Ba­choo