PRESIDENT Max Richards promised to do all in his power to unite the people of Trinidad and Tobago, whose fourth President he became yesterday afternoon in a formal ceremony on the grounds of the President’s official residence, St Ann’s. With his wife, Dr Jean Richards at his side he promised as an educator to do his best to raise the levels of education in the country. Here is the speech:
“My wife Jean and I welcome you to this ceremony to inaugurate the fifth term of the Presidency of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. My first obligation is to express cautious gratitude to the country for accepting me as fourth President of this great nation. It is an honour as humbling in its exaltation as it is daunting in its commandment, and I accept it with all my heart.
Many of us believe that the choice of a President should be seen to be above party politics. The lack of consensus on this occasion is therefore a personal sadness to me. But it has only made me more resolved to serve the whole nation without fear and without favour. I owe it to the nation to record that the other citizen in the election was the first person to call and offer congratulations when the results were declared. I consider the generosity, graciousness and good wishes of Mr Ganace Ramdial to be a signal to our people that although there was a contested election, consensus after the decision is a desired and possible goal.
Over the past weeks, I know that there are many people concerned about the decision. I have been overwhelmed and deeply touched by expressions of support from individuals in all walks of life and of all shades of political opinion. It is comforting to think that if I live up to the oath I have solemnly sworn, all the people of this great nation will think of me as their President. 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.
This country is so blessed. From bitter cane to black gold. Energy for so. A generous land making room for the meeting of peoples and cultures from everywhere on the globe. Such beauty, intelligence, knowledge and creativity, such rhythmn, flexibility and speed. So much individual talent. What a legacy is ours to inherit from the nation’s distinguished sons and daughters of the past, what harmonious models to emulate. None more so than Andre Tanker, forever young, forever fresh, a true creole, improviser extraordinaire, combining in his person and in his music all the elements that make up the Trinbagonian person. He gone away. May he come back home and stay in the heart of his people.
This Presidency begins in the shadow of two years of political uncertainty, and under a threatening sky. Internationally there are very strong indications of imminent war and dread 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. I have too much faith in the strength and goodness of our 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 if had no past, speeding without a vision into a future it does not seem to believe in. We have it in us to arrest this negative thrust but where do we begin? I want to find out, and I know that I can do so if I get closer to the people in their communities and in their settlements, and if rapport can be established with the young people of our country.
Excellencies and distinguished guests, no one who is alive and thinking at this time can be sanguine about our unity and about our vision of ourselves. There are in this country people of every religion, people of every race and colour— black, brown, white, yellow— and people like myself, who find it hard to separate out the different entities that have been blended in their formation.
We more than any people know no race has a monopoly on beauty or intelligence. That no religion has an exclusive line to God. After decades of being divided and ruled by those who wished to exploit us, each group in the country has learnt to respect and make space for the religion and heritage of the others. There is no question of removing all of the melting down of the differences that make this country sweet, “You’ll be you and I’ll be me”, according to David Rudder, but we have perhaps come to a point where it is necessary to insist that we all have a double identity. Each group is unique at the same time we are all products of the meeting of cultures and peoples.
The Shabine or mulatto figure in the Walcott poem speaks for the hybridity in all of us:
“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”
Whatever our creed or colour, each of us is the nation. We would do well to remember that the self-seekers of the present employ the divide and rule tactics of the Imperial mind-benders of the past, and that the health and harmony and glory of our civilisation depends upon our holding fast and showing the way:
See how we movin’; see how we groovin’
See how we step in style
One lovely nation under a groove
The Ganges done meet the Nile
The boys with the hidden agendas
And the mind-benders
They will always do their do
But now that we’re holding hands
Trodding through this promised land
Them could come along too
I pledge this Office to taking steps to encourage our people to understand and live out this ennobling vision of our possibility. Fellow citizens, I think this is the right moment for me to glance at the 27 year history of the Presidency, and pay tribute to my illustrious predecessors. Each brought 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 synch (muhurta) as many of our fellow citizens would pronounce.
There could have been no better choice of opening batsman than Sir Ellis Clarke, a man of incomparable gifts of intellect and expression, a man with an international profile and a presence that impressed the idea of a native President on a population more accustomed to the Colonial Governor and the Union Jack. The foundations laid by Sir Ellis were built upon by Justice Noor M Hassanali coming in at one wicket honourably down, a man with an easy upright stance and a capacity for princely movement down the pitch and a natural touch. His long innings consolidated the Presidency as a stabilising force and as an institution people could look up to for guidance and example. Arthur NR Robinson came to the Presidency straight out of active politics, a patient man, economist and lawyer, with a background of stubborn commitment to causes like human rights, the eradication of poverty, and the establishment of an International Criminal Court.
We were entering a period when new economic strains and social and demographic change were bringing all kinds of issues to the fore. He was playing on a wearing pitch, but he was the man for them. He played his shots as his sense of propriety and justice required effecting a handful of calculated falling pulls that have raised serious questions about Island governance, an innovative President and international leader deriving satisfaction from an unflagging struggle for mechanisms to promote international justice and peace.
These are major acts to follow but there are many opportunities left for others to serve this country. There is much to be done in the field of education and human resource development. The investments of successive governments in education and training is inadequate, and what we are seeing would seem to suggest that we do not get value for such money as is spent. 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 humane education for all at every level.
In the report of the West Indian Commission entitled “Time for Action”, the Commissioners observe that “the prospects of economic recovery and development will hinge largely upon the performance of the knowledge sector”. Higher education is critically important to our economy. The knowledge and skills forged and transmitted by the university and other tertiary institutions enhance industrial competitiveness and they can make substantial contributions to the generation of wealth and, by extension, to employment in the long run. But there is more. It is the tertiary education and training system that we must look to for the high technology, the specific job skills and the supervisory and management staff to help us to work our way into greater control of the energy sector.
It is to the tertiary system that we must look for the quality teachers for all other levels of the educational system. A President with a background in Engineering Sciences and Education can be expected to welcome and take a serious interest in the proposed University of Trinidad and Tobago. It goes without saying but a familiar warning must be repeated that increased access to higher education would be wasteful if there were not quality improvements in the primary and secondary systems, and a concerted attempt to provide early childhood care and to improve the quality of parenting and family life.
It would of course be a serious omission for an educator to talk about education without repeating a truth that is all too often taken for granted, and is seldom deliberately addressed by those who make the curricula, the truth that an education in Science that ignores the Humanities is just as bad as an Education in the Humanities that acts as if the Sciences do not exist.
Excellencies and distinguished guests, we face mounting material expectations roused by the media, by close proximity to conspicuous affluence in the north, and by ostentatious consumerism in our own country where there is growing inequality in wealth, and income distribution. Old needs and new desires have added to the seemingly intractable problems of urban poverty and rural deprivation. And if these were not enough, unemployment and under-employment are hanging out in abandoned fields and crowded street corners trying to decide what to do.
How to respond to these new pressures threatening as they do to tear the whole fabric of society apart, must be one of the gravest of all concerns of any responsible government. I can do no more at this time that to commit this Office to our Constitution and to the preamble which states inter alia, “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.”
My family and I give thanks to Almighty God for all his favours, to the many who have sent us expressions of goodwill and support; and for their prayers, to the honourable Chief Justice who has just administered the Oath of Office, to the Religious Organisations who have offered prayers, to the members of the Defence Force and to all who have contributed to this evening’s proceedings.
Finally we wish to express our sincerest appreciation to their Excellencies for all the work and thought they have put into organising this special occasion. I thank you all for the courtesy of your attention. May God Bless us all and may peace be with us this evening and always.
