RYAN BA­CHOO

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

“The art of the pres­i­den­cy is more im­por­tant than the lim­its of the pres­i­den­cy.”

It is well es­tab­lished that the role of T&T’s Pres­i­dent is cer­e­mo­ni­al rather than ex­ec­u­tive and Ker­wyn Gar­cia hus­band of Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, wants to play with the cards he has been dealt in­stead of fo­cus­ing on the pow­ers the of­fice doesn’t have.

“There are ways and means one can lead silent­ly, one can lead del­i­cate­ly, with­out bang­ing up against the con­sti­tu­tion­al pa­ra­me­ters or cer­tain­ly with­out ex­ceed­ing them,” he ex­plained.

“I think the chal­lenge of any pres­i­den­cy, and cer­tain­ly it seems to me Her Ex­cel­len­cy is up to that chal­lenge, is how to find ways to ma­noeu­vre with­in the bounds of the Con­sti­tu­tion but to draw out of the con­sti­tu­tion­al words, the black and white text of the Con­sti­tu­tion, how to draw and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­gage at a deep­er lev­el with the so­ci­ety.”

Gar­cia wants to set the lead­ing ex­am­ple by which men view and treat women in our so­ci­ety.

“If I can, I would like as First Gen­tle­man to demon­strate to men how one can sup­port one’s spouse, how one can sup­port women in this coun­try in lead­er­ship po­si­tions with­out feel­ing in the least bit di­min­ished and with­out feel­ing in the least bit threat­ened. I’d like to be able to show how a man can love and be com­plete­ly de­vot­ed to a woman in a re­la­tion­ship that brings both of them tremen­dous joy and it does not in­volve any un­healthy idea of com­pe­ti­tion be­tween them,” he said in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view on Mon­day af­ter­noon at Pres­i­dent’s Grounds.

Gar­cia’s role is new to him and the coun­try and he ad­mits more time is need­ed than the first week to de­cide the shape this pres­i­den­cy will take. It might mean up­end­ing tra­di­tion­al prac­tices that have come to be syn­ony­mous with the of­fice.

He ex­plained: “I imag­ine one of the things that might have to be con­sid­ered is the gen­der ap­pro­pri­ate­ness of some of those pa­tron ac­tiv­i­ties. For ex­am­ple, as I un­der­stand it, Her Ex­cel­len­cy the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic is the pa­tron for Scouts and the spouse of the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic is tra­di­tion­al­ly the pa­tron for Girl Guides.

“Well, I’m hap­py to be the pa­tron for Girl Guides but it might be that Her Ex­cel­len­cy has oth­er ideas so we’re all in the process of try­ing to fig­ure things out.”

How­ev­er, Gar­cia’s com­mit­ment to set­ting an ex­am­ple as the hus­band of the Pres­i­dent for oth­er men to fol­low re­mains an im­por­tant ob­jec­tive.

“What I would like, if I would be per­mit­ted, is to en­cour­age young men in par­tic­u­lar to come in­to health­i­er re­la­tion­ship with their fe­male coun­ter­parts and to come in­to health­i­er re­la­tion­ship with them­selves,” he said.

At her in­au­gu­ra­tion, Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo made it clear that her hus­band will be a ma­jor part of her pres­i­den­cy

“I hope that he knows that as his re­ward, I will be lean­ing on him heav­i­ly for help with my ad­vo­ca­cy for the var­i­ous ini­tia­tives I have out­lined in this ad­dress, par­tic­u­lar­ly in pro­mot­ing the Of­fice of Pres­i­dent Of­fice as a cra­dle of in­tel­lec­tu­al, cul­tur­al and artis­tic ex­plo­ration among the youth – an ini­tia­tive in which I know he is deeply in­ter­est­ed,” she said.

It is an un­der­tak­ing Gar­cia has vowed to give his best shot at with an eye on al­low­ing young peo­ple to ex­press them­selves and grow while al­so up­lift­ing the coun­try in which they live.

He added: “I would look for­ward to lift­ing the con­scious­ness and help­ing to lift youth con­scious­ness where art and cul­ture are con­cerned be­cause at the end of the day my be­lief, and I think Her Ex­cel­len­cy’s as well, is that the youth are the fu­ture and art and cul­ture are the heart and soul of the coun­try. There­fore, if you can arrange a sit­u­a­tion in which you have young peo­ple lift­ing the heart and soul of the coun­try I think we couldn’t be off to any bet­ter start than that.”

There can be some very rough days at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, and ul­ti­mate­ly, Gar­cia wants to re­main com­mit­ted to his first re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, sup­port­ing his wife the Pres­i­dent in the of­fice she now holds.