Caricom Chairman breaks silence on Secretary General’s reappointment

Cari­com Chair­man Dr Ter­rance Drew has moved to clar­i­fy the process be­hind the reap­point­ment of the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, fol­low­ing con­cerns raised by Trinidad and To­ba­go over gov­er­nance and pro­ce­dure with­in the re­gion­al body.

In a de­tailed state­ment is­sued af­ter a spe­cial emer­gency meet­ing of Cari­com Heads on April 10, Drew said the reap­point­ment was prop­er­ly dis­cussed and agreed dur­ing a re­treat of Heads ear­li­er this year, in line with Ar­ti­cle 24 of the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas.

He not­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Prime Min­is­ter did not at­tend the meet­ing, and said ef­forts were made to in­form ab­sent lead­ers be­fore the de­ci­sion was for­mal­ly an­nounced.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, Heads had agreed at the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence in St Kitts and Nevis that the mat­ter of the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al’s reap­point­ment would be con­sid­ered dur­ing a closed re­treat ses­sion, where con­sen­sus was reached.

Drew’s state­ment al­so ad­dressed con­cerns about rep­re­sen­ta­tion, say­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s For­eign Min­is­ter Sean Sobers had in­di­cat­ed un­cer­tain­ty about at­tend­ing the re­treat due to sea­sick­ness, and the coun­try was ul­ti­mate­ly not present dur­ing the dis­cus­sion.

The state­ment fur­ther ex­plained that at­tempts were made to con­tact the Prime Min­is­ter af­ter the de­ci­sion was tak­en, but these were un­suc­cess­ful, prompt­ing con­tact in­stead with the For­eign Min­is­ter.

The Chair­man said Heads al­so used the re­treat to agree on wider gov­er­nance re­forms, in­clud­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a sub-com­mit­tee led by Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Guyana and Ja­maica to re­view fi­nanc­ing and gov­er­nance struc­tures with­in CARI­COM in­sti­tu­tions.

A sep­a­rate agree­ment was al­so reached to is­sue a state­ment on Cari­com's meet­ing with Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio.

Drew ex­pressed hope that the Com­mu­ni­ty would re­turn to in­ter­nal mech­a­nisms for re­solv­ing such dis­putes, warn­ing that pub­lic dis­agree­ments risk un­der­min­ing re­gion­al in­ter­gra­tion ef­forts.

The state­ment by the Cari­com chair­man al­so de­tailed a full time­line of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion sent to all mem­bers states and a full break­down of all events.

On­ly on Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar urged Cari­com to pro­vide full doc­u­men­ta­tion af­ter she made pub­lic a let­ter sent to Cari­com by Min­is­ter Sobers.