By Prior Beharry
SAYING that she resigned from the People’s National Movement (PNM) eight years ago, President-elect Christine Kangaloo is asking citizens to give her a chance as she takes up the highest office in Trinidad and Tobago.
She was speaking to the media at the Rotunda of the Red House in Port of Spain on Thursday when Speaker of the House of Representatives Bridgid Annisette-George presented her with the Instruments of Election to the Office of President. She received 48 votes of the Electoral College to Israel Khan’s 22 last Friday.
Kangaloo said, “I ask people to give me a chance.”
She said there have been people who contested elections for political parties and then became independent senators and members of service commissions.
And while that transition happened, no one questioned there credibility, she said.
Before becoming President of the Senate in 2015, Kangaloo was a member of the PNM and also a government minister in the Patrick Manning administration.
She said she was confident that her political ties will not affect her judgement as president.
Kangaloo said, “When I became President of the Senate, I resigned from participation in the political party, I resigned my membership.
“I, also, since 2015, as the Presiding Officer, as the President of the Senate, I have attended no political functions. I have taken part in no local activities. I have made no political decisions. I have received no political instructions, that is how I have been conducting myself for the last seven years.”
She said, ““It will be artificial of me to deny that I was a member of a political party and that I held different offices at different times in my life, but I also want to say that while I held those offices as minister, I performed my duties without any sort of partisan interest,”
Kangaloo said she plans to meet outgoing President Paula-Mae Weekes next week.
She said she intends to be more accessible to the media but will decide what she will speak about.
“I want to be accessible, but I don’t think that the President of the country should be in a press conference every week. I think there are times to speak and there are times to be quiet, so it’ll be according to my intuition, and if I say so, my intuition has guided me over the years. So, I intend to be open and accessible, but of course, the dictates of propriety and what the office demands, all of that will come into play.”
