T&T President Paula-Mae Weekes 2018.

Port of Spain, Trinidad :President Paula-Mae Weekes inaugurated during  a ceremony at the Queens Park Savannah,becoming the country’s  sixth and first female President.

# HerExcellency

This unscientific research led me to the conclusion that it falls to each President to define within prescribed limits his or in this case her own role. After much deliberation I identified my role as “humble first servant” with the mandate to render service with enthusiasm.

Many experts real and armchair, in positions high and low, “beset us round with dismal stories” they tell us that T&T is perilously close to the point of no return - crime, corruption, racism, abysmal public services and an ineffective judicial system, among other problems are so thick on the ground that all hope is lost; that we will soon be, if we are not already there, a failed state, however defined. So how do we respond to these commentators and to our reality? What are we to do?

As I see it we have but 2 choices….Option 1 - We can lament, blame, criticise and allow a miasma of despair to overwhelm us or Option 2 we can consciously and intentionally choose the alternative. Not wish for - or dream about - or only hope and pray for the alternative, but make up a hard mind and mobilise forces and resources to step out boldly and make TT a better place for us and our children all the while understanding that though faith is a necessity, without action it is useless.

Let me confess up front to sharing certain characteristics with Pollyanna - that storybook character filled with irrepressible optimism and a tendency to find good in everything - but I do not now nor have I ever lived in an ivory tower nor worn blinkers. I may have had some advantages that others have not, but having lived in Trinidad & Tobago all my life, I have endured the maddening inefficiencies of the public sector, I too drive with my windows up and doors locked even in broad daylight, I have lost two cars to thieves, and waited hours for medical attention for a relative at POSGH.

I know what the murder count is and how many of the victims have been women and children slaughtered in acts of domestic violence, I am cognizant of the volatile tensions in east Port of Spain. I see people affected by mental illness, addiction and homelessness sleeping on the streets and if I needed to get to Tobago in a hurry I could not be certain if or when I would arrive. I comprehend fully the state of the state and so understand why we might have every reason to despair.

None of us is blind or foolish enough to deny that Trinidad and Tobago is going through dark times, but I echo the words of C.S. Lewis when I say -”this a good world gone wrong but it still retains the memory of what ought to have been” So, here comes the Pollyanna in me now - it is my mission, mission entirely possible, to infect each and every one of you with a bright and positive spirit as we strive to turn our beloved nation into what it ought to have been and still can be.