Antigua and Barbuda diplomat urges CARICOM Secretary General to consider resigning

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da’s Am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed States and the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), Sir Ronald Sanders is urg­ing the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, Dr. Car­la Bar­nett to con­sid­er ten­der­ing her res­ig­na­tion amidst the on­go­ing con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing her reap­point­ment to the post.

“If I were the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of CARI­COM and I’m be­ing quite se­ri­ous here and this had oc­curred I would have re­signed and I would have re­signed be­cause I would have said I must not stand in the way of Caribbean in­te­gra­tion and the move­ment for­ward,” Sir Ronald Sanders said on the state-owned ABS Tele­vi­sion.

Sir Ronald Sanders, as he ap­peared on ABS Tele­vi­sion on Tues­day night (CMC Pho­to)

Late last month, in a brief state­ment, the CARI­COM chair­man and St Kitts and Nevis Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Ter­rance Drew, said that Bar­nett had at­tained the “re­quired ma­jor­i­ty” from among re­gion­al lead­ers re­gard­ing her re-ap­point­ment at last month’s CARI­COM sum­mit held in Bas­seterre.

But Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who was not present when the vote was tak­en to reap­point Bar­nett, who be­came the eighth CARI­COM Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al on Au­gust 15, 2021, has pub­licly chal­lenged the reap­point­ment process of the Be­lizean econ­o­mist.

She has dis­missed a state­ment is­sued by Prime Min­is­ter Drew in which re­it­er­at­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go was not “un­in­vit­ed” to the re­treat where the de­ci­sion was tak­en.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has called for the min­utes of the re­treat meet­ing, ques­tion­ing “where’s GS Bar­nett’s per­for­mance ap­praisal? Where’s the doc­u­men­ta­tion of the 2021 ap­point­ment process which is claimed to be the same as the 2026 process..

Trinidad and To­ba­go de­spite call­ing for a meet­ing of re­gion­al lead­ers to dis­cuss the is­sue, was not present when the lead­ers met vir­tu­al­ly last Fri­day to dis­cuss the mat­ter.

Sir Ronald told tele­vi­sion view­ers it is clear to him that one “ se­nior gov­ern­ment (of­fi­cial) and Prime Min­is­ter is not in favour” of Bar­nett’s ap­point­ment and as a re­sult she should con­sid­er step­ping down.

“Why am I still there? Be­cause it is clear that I will nev­er en­joy her sup­port and why there­fore would I put my­self in a sit­u­a­tion in which I am now the cause of the rift. If I were Car­la Bar­nett, I would re­sign now on prin­ci­ple be­cause she will nev­er have Kam­la Per­sad will not at­tend the meet­ing if Car­la Bar­nett is at that meet­ing, nei­ther will her for­eign min­is­ter….,” he added.

ABS Tele­vi­sion which said it will broad­cast the en­tire in­ter­view with Sir Ronald at a lat­er date, said the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da diplo­mat, who is al­so Chan­cel­lor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Guyana made ref­er­ence to the oth­er per­sons who served as sec­re­tary gen­er­al be­fore Bar­nett.

ST. JOHN’S, An­tigua, Apr 15, CMC