Caricom agrees to refer Secretary General matter to CCJ

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment have agreed to re­fer the dis­pute sur­round­ing the reap­point­ment of Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett to the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ).

The de­ci­sion was an­nounced to­day dur­ing the 51st Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment in St Lu­cia.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had pro­posed re­fer­ring the mat­ter to the CCJ af­ter rais­ing con­cerns about the process used to ex­tend Dr Bar­nett’s tenure.

Ahead of Mon­day’s Heads-on­ly re­treat, Per­sad-Bisses­sar pro­posed a pack­age of mea­sures, in­clud­ing re­fer­ring the dis­pute to the CCJ for an ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion. She al­so pro­posed that Dr Bar­nett con­tin­ue on a month-to-month ba­sis if her term ex­pires be­fore the court de­liv­ers its opin­ion, that both the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al and Cari­com’s Gen­er­al Coun­sel re­cuse them­selves from mat­ters re­lat­ing to the ad­vi­so­ry pro­ceed­ings, and that no ir­re­versible ad­min­is­tra­tive de­ci­sions be tak­en while the le­gal is­sues are be­ing de­ter­mined.

She al­so said Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mained com­mit­ted to re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and would abide by the CCJ’s rul­ing.

Fur­ther de­tails, in­clud­ing the time­line for the re­fer­ral, have not yet been an­nounced