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POLITICAL analyst Dr Bishnu Ragoonath has expressed concerns about the current and pending appointments to be made by President Christine Kangaloo under the TT Constitution, talking to Newsday on July 11.

Newsday had sought his views on the current row in which several government ministers have questioned Kangaloo's independence as president in light of her background as a PNM minister and in view of her choice of independent senators. Kangaloo herself has ascribed recent criticisms of her to gender discrimination, but Ragoonath gave little credence to this argument.

Newsday asked if Kangaloo would be expected to have a bias towards the PNM which had elected her as Head of State and which had appointed her as a government minister and then as Senate President. Alternatively, would her office now have such high esteem that she would be expected to be above partisanism, as once mooted by philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his book, Leviathan?