First female President for Trinidad and Tobago

Paula-Mae Weekes

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad -Trinidad and Tobago will get its first female President later this month.

Madam Justice Paula-Mae Weekes, a Court of  Appeal judge in the Turks and Caicos Islands, has been nominated to succeed Anthony Carmona as the next head of state.

On Monday the Opposition yesterday gave approval for the Government’s sole presidential nominee, Madam Justice Weekes, to become  Trinidad and Tobago’s sixth and first female President.

The Electoral College, which is made up of all the elected members of Parliament and Senate, was due to vote for a new President on January  19.

But Opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar explained that since Weekes’ nomination was unopposed “there will be no vote and the President will be declared as duly elected under the Constitution.

“As of now, Madam Justice Weekes is the President-designate of Trinidad and Tobago.”

Weekes became a High Court judge in Trinidad and Tobago  in September 1996.In 2005, she was appointed a Court of Appeal judge. She served in that position until she retired in the twin-island republic in 2016. She was sworn in as a judge of the Turks and Caicos Islands Court of Appeal in February 2017, for a three-year term.

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