Richards assures he will be no one's puppet

The new President was bold. Some say he drifted a little into politics. But his inaugural speech yesterday gave comfort to those who wanted to see a bipartisan President, acting in the interest of all and not a puppet to be manipulated by the government.

President, His Excellency George Maxwell Richards, addressing a large audience on the President’s House Grounds, asserted his independence; spoke on the social issues of race, unemployment, poverty, education and attacked the “self-seekers of the present, employing the divide and rule tactics of the Imperial mind-benders of the past”. His Excellency, the only person at the VIP podium who was tapping his programme to his legs, as the Defence Force played “Trini to the Bone”, also showed himself completely in touch with the people, drawing relevant quotations from local composers and artists, such as Andre Tanker and David Rudder. The uninitiated in the audience however were a bit startled when he recited an excerpt from Derek Walcott’s “Schooner Flight”: “I’m just a red nigger who love the sea, I had a sound colonial education, I have Dutch, nigger and English in me, And either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation”.

His Excellency also signalled his intention to “get closer to the people in their communities and in their settlements”. President Richards, from the word “go”, seemed to be suggesting that that he would be his own man. “I give assurance and serve warning that I will allow nothing and no one to prevent me from bringing to the tasks before us qualities of independence, even-handedness, impartiality, objectivity, fairness and consideration for all,” he told the guests at yesterday’s inauguration, which was held at President’s House. Richards also opened his address by noting that his Presidency was begnning in the shadow of two years of political uncertainty “and under a threatening sky”. “Internationally there are very strong indications of imminent war, imaginings of terrorist attacks, while in our island retreat we are startled where we should feel safest — in our neighbourhood streets, in our homes, and in our schools,” he said. The President added he had too much faith in the strength and goodness of the people to think that “we are doomed. But I see that the price of progress is high. I see signs of a country forgetting itself, hurtling in a dark as if it had no past, speeding without vision into a future it does not seem to believe in,” he said.

The President, a former UWI principal, delved deeply into the area of education, saying that successive governments had not invested adequately in education and training. “What we are seeking would seem to suggest that we do not get value for such money as is spent,” he said. He said a President with a background in Engineering Science and Education could be expected “to welcome and to take a serious interest in the proposed University of Trinidad and Tobago”. He said the economic well-being of a society, peace, order and social harmony, the emotional stability of citizens, and the possibility of equal opportunity and the eradication of poverty all depend to a large extent on the provision of high quality and and humane education for all at every level.

The President, using a cricket analogy, praised all his predecessors, saying that each had his own style and each had in his repertoire the strengths required by the Presidential moment. “In each case the stars were so aligned that the hour and the man were in propitious sync,” he said. For his own part, Professor Richards committed the Office of the President to the Constitution and its preamble: “Whereas the People of Trinidad and Tobago respect the principles of social justice and therefore believe that the operation of the economic system should result in the material resources of the community being so distributed as to subserve the common good, that there should be adequate means of livelihood for all”.