Mar 2013 Financial News

President Carmona: We are one

Mar 19, 2013

Newly sworn-in President Justice Anthony Thomas Aquinas Carmona, flexing his presidential muscles in his inaugural address yesterday, said the office of the president was not impotent and warned he intended to keep a close check on the Government’s conduct.

His speech was also a call to action to all citizens to put right the country's wrongs. And he spoke confidently of national unity, announcing emphatically, "We are one." In a spirited 20-minute speech that earned him much loud and sustained applause throughout from guests at the inauguration ceremony at the Hasely Crawford Stadium, Carmona reminded his hearers he was not an executive president but did have “constitutional clout.”

The new President, who walked into the stadium holding his wife Reema’s hand, and followed by their children, wasted little time in getting down to business. He said Section 81 of the Constitution mandates the prime minister to keep the president fully informed of the government’s conduct and said he intended to invoke this rule for the good of the country. “There is a dialogue mechanism that will be invoked affirmatively for the good of the Republic,” he said.

He said he had sworn to uphold the Constitution and the law and do right to all manner of people without fear or favour, affection or ill will, something he has done unflinchingly in his previous career. Noting that he had listened to the national debate on the roles and responsibilities of the president, Carmona cleared the air on what powers he had and did not have.
“Under the Westminster system there are parameters within which I must operate.

“The powers you think I have, I do not. The powers you do not think I have, I do.” “I may not have a magic wand,” Carmona continued. “But the office of the presidency is not impotent. I do have constitutional clout.” Showing his spiritual side, Carmona reminded the nation the preamble to the Constitution said there was a higher being to whom citizens were all accountable.

He said the need for constitutional reform to fix the problems the average person had with the issue of governance must not be dismissed. Many years ago, he warned, this ship called T&T has left its moorings of integrity, accountability, responsibility and inclusiveness. “The cynics may howl in the wilderness. But if we are to establish a more progressive, more humane society, real change must be invoked.”

Carmona spent a significant portion of his speech on the issue of crime. He said there was a growing spirit of intimidation and lawlessness in T&T which found expression in acts of violence, brutality and the exploitation of the disadvantaged and which were seen as “Trini culture.” He said T&T could not be indifferent to the ravages of injustice and marginalisation. “Today our jails house a disproportionate amount of males from depressed communities and we need ways and means as a society to address this dilemma.”

Carmona insisted the family remained the bedrock of this solution and children needed love and order. “In the criminal justice system, there is so much pain and anguish,” the President said emotionally. “We must not trivialise the sanctity of human life by dismissing the deaths of young people as gang-related. “Revenge is a relay race that will never end unless there is genuine out-of-box intervention.”

Parliament must no longer engage in tired politics on this issue, he said, to cheers and whistles. “What is needed is a truly collaborative effort among all the stakeholders to address the crisis that is crime.” Carmona said he planned to infuse new life into the national watchwords, discipline, production and tolerance, and said T&T has become a highly indisciplined society.

He made it clear that the mandate to be responsible and accountable did not only apply to people in high places, since citizens could not demand accountability from people in high places without invoking those principles in their own lives. "Production" was a call for people to re-examine their work ethic, to demand a fair day’s pay but at the same time to commit to giving a fair day’s work and search out opportunities to be less dependent on the State, the President said. Tolerance is allied to the practice of empathy, respect and compassion for others, he argued.


Source:
Yvonne Baboolal
Trinidad Guardian
Tuesday March 19, 2013

http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/2013-03-19/president-carmona-we-are-one-cnc3-video