Ms. Kangaloo is an attorney with a scant body of work and little evidence of valued legal research.
Much of her prominence results from holding public office, although her most recent bid for the electorate’s favour – the Pointe-a-Pierre seat in the 2010 general election – resulted in failure.
She is from a well-known family and has some measure of carriage, although she was accused of partiality while she served as President of the Senate.
Her election as President of Trinidad and Tobago last January was controversial, with strong objections from the parliamentary opposition.
“Citizens who value the preservation and sanctuary of our national independent institutions must be alarmed,” David Lee, Opposition Chief Whip of the House of Representatives said, “while those who don’t have eyes to see will feel.”
Apart from making statutory appointments and conducting ceremonial duties, President Kangaloo did not appear under the national searchlight.
Until last week, when she presided over the Westminster-style re-opening of Parliament!
Then, T&T heard her thoughts on national governance and on independent senators whose collective duty is to hold the authorities to account and speak without the yoke of partisanship.
President Kangaloo did not do well in her initial offering.
She peddled tired and stilted suggestions, such as a call for legislating on the steelband, long years after the instrument became thriving industries in other societies.
President Kangaloo did not chastise the administration for its failure to enact the long-promised whistleblower law or decry the feeble version of procurement legislation.
She did not make the Government answerable on the critical issues of the day – the security emergency, poverty, water shortage, joblessness, malnutrition, schools fiasco, lack of investments, flight of the middle class, etc.
Instead, in the most unimaginative and trite assertion, she sermonised that the Government and Opposition must work together.
Her sanctimonious remark suggests she is not aware that T&T’s political system is adversarial, and the Government must earn legislative support.
President Kangaloo did not provide an effective appreciation of the lay of the land – troubled with social and economic problems, mediocre leadership, and inequitable distribution of wealth.
She paid no heed to the ever-declining economy (25 per cent fall-off since 2014), and the withering energy sector.
She did not raise a howler over the decay of national institutions and the decline of the public service.
Her presidential address was an assembly clichéd lines a typically aloof Colonial Secretary would have delivered to a docile audience.
Strike one for those – like MP Lee – who had strong reservations about Ms. Kangaloo’s abrupt rise to the highest office in the land.
The raw fact is she simply does not have the maturity, experience, insight, expertise, and demeanour to be a respected Head of State in diverse T&T.
Without the requisite skill set, President Kangaloo named four new independent senators with similar inadequate knowledge and bearing.
In a Senate that once fielded Michael de la Bastide, Diana Mahabir-Wyatt, Martin Daly and Gerald Furness-Smith, there are now no independent senators with expertise in the economy and the energy sector.
Like the occupant of President’s House, the independent benches are not filled with formidable, accomplished and nationally respected personalities.
There is no one with a commanding presence.
For this, Trinidad and Tobago is poorer, governance is weaker, and the people’s interests are inadequately served.
It is further graphic evidence of our society being diminished.
