By PETER GREEN
President Christine Carla Kangaloo has been in office for three and a half years. During this time, she has had to endure a lot of criticism. As far as she was concerned, she took them in stride.
But on Tuesday night, she came out swinging her bat. She delivered the feature address at the International Women’s Forum of Trinidad and Tobago’s Inspirational Women Awards Gala 2026 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.
Kangaloo added: “At my inauguration in 2023, I said that there was too much shouting in our country. I said that, as President, my words did not need also to be shouted in the public square. I promised, instead, to lead by being calmer and more reflective.
“I said that my way would be to serve as the country’s “Diplomat-In-Chief, making the case for a better Trinidad and Tobago firmly, but without acrimony or bitterness.” Three years later, the shouting has not diminished. If anything, our public language has grown harsher, coarser and more inflammatory. That should concern us – especially when such language comes from those entrusted with public authority: because leadership gives language both reach and permission.
“In our current combative and fractious environment, insult too readily substitutes for argument; provocation for persuasion; and division, for the patient work of bringing people together. That environment makes the discipline that I promised more difficult. But it also makes it more necessary. Mine was not a ceremonial aspiration. It was, and remains, a promise about how I will use the authority entrusted to me.”
The President continued, “I once walked the road of active politics. I know its rhythms, its reflexes, and its temptations. I know how readily criticism can invite counter-criticism, and how natural it can feel to answer every charge, correct every distortion, and return every blow. I also know that a Presidency cannot be conducted as a continuation of party politics by other means.
“As President, I have therefore had repeatedly to choose not to answer every allegation, caricature, or unkindness that has been directed at me or at my Office. That choice is not made because there is no answer. It is made because a Presidency consumed by replying to every provocation would soon lose sight of the work it was established to do.
“In an age in which accusation travels faster than verification, silence is easily mistaken for admission; calm, for weakness; and courtesy for a lack of courage. But not every silence is surrender, and not every act of restraint, is fear. There are moments in leadership when one must choose between immediate vindication, and remaining faithful to what one represents.”
In her address, Kangaloo said the road can be an especially difficult choice for women.
“Women in authority are too often offered a false alternative: remain agreeable and risk being considered weak; or demonstrate strength by adopting the harshest habits traditionally associated with power. I do not accept that choice. A woman does not have to become coarse in order to be convincing; or hardened in order to be strong. Authority does not acquire weight, merely because it is exercised loudly.
“Another test comes when others seek to tell a woman how to do her job, or lead her down a path which, after careful consideration, she knows is not hers to take. She must listen, take proper advice, and examine her responsibilities with care. But she must also retain her judgment, and decline – calmly and firmly – any path which the lawful execution of her duty does not permit.
“Restraint, however, is quite a different animal from indifference. And I do accept that there are occasions when silence would fail the very institution one has a duty to protect.
“Earlier this year, an online headline alleged that the Office of the President had been ‘prostituted’ in connection with a financial transaction. I will be candid: I found that word exceptionally offensive. It was not merely severe criticism, or an allegation of institutional abuse.
Whatever may have been intended, it took a word bound up with the sexual exploitation and degradation of women, and placed that imagery upon an Office headed by a woman. Its effect was to make my womanhood the instrument by which both my authority, and the dignity of the Office, were diminished.
“On that occasion, the Office responded. The word, however, was not withdrawn. It remained in the headline and was repeated in the body of the article, qualified there only by “possibly”, while an editorial postscript was added, stating that the article made no assertion that I had acted improperly.
That response did not meet the objection; it in fact served only to sharpen it. For, if no impropriety was being attributed to the President, then the sexualized label was plainly unnecessary to any legitimate examination of the transaction. Neither a qualification nor a later disclaimer could undo the degradation carried by the language itself.”
Kangaloo said at this moment in our history, Trinidad and Tobago has a woman as President, a woman as Prime Minister and a woman as Leader of the Opposition. That is significant, she added, and it deserves to be celebrated.
“But, while representation certainly is progress, we must at the same time recognize that it is not yet transformation. Women can occupy the highest offices in the land, while assumptions about women’s authority remain stubbornly embedded in the culture around them.
“Earlier this month, I lost my mother, Barbara Kangaloo, at the age of ninety-eight. In preparing to be with you tonight, I have thought often of her, because she was my first and most enduring teacher in leadership.
“At her funeral, I recounted that she had said that she had not produced a weakling for a daughter. What she produced, was not a daughter incapable of being hurt; but one who had been taught by her that hurt need not become hatred; that pressure need not become bitterness; and that composure is not the absence of struggle, but mastery of one’s response to it.”
