Belize’s Briceño backs Barnett; scoffs at Sobers’ ”seasick” remark

Be­lize Prime Min­is­ter John Briceño has thrown his sup­port be­hind CARI­COM Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett while crit­i­cis­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ab­sence from a re­cent head of gov­ern­ment meet­ing, de­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as one that should be re­solved with­in the re­gion­al bloc.

Speak­ing with re­porters in Be­lize, Briceño said even though Bar­nett was a mem­ber of an op­pos­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ty in Be­lize, he said dif­fer­ences can be had in­ter­nal­ly but in­ter­na­tion­al­ly they stand as one.

He said Bar­nett was a "high­ly qual­i­fied" Be­lizean who con­tin­ues to have the sup­port of Be­lize.

"Like I tell every­one, we may have our dif­fer­ences here in Be­lize, but out­side of Be­lize we are one, we are Be­lizeans and we stand by one an­oth­er. And I do be­lieve that she has done a good job. There is al­ways scope for im­prove­ment, but that should come from us heads."

That's when he crit­i­cised the lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion from Trinidad and To­ba­go at the meet­ing.

"The Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go chose not to at­tend the con­fer­ence of the heads, where on­ly heads meet. And when she did not go, we gave the op­por­tu­ni­ty, the chair­man, Prime Min­is­ter (Ter­rance) Drew from St. Kitts and Nevis, made an at­tempt to in­vite the for­eign min­is­ter to rep­re­sent, but he said that he could not go be­cause he gets sea­sick. It was like a five-minute boat ride. They chose not to at­tend. And so to­day we're go­ing to have a meet­ing to dis­cuss that. And I'm hop­ing that we can find an am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tion to this mat­ter."

Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Sean Sobers has said his com­ment about the jour­ney was made in jest.

“I made a joke about the modal­i­ty of trans­porta­tion but at no point in time, and I re­peat, at no point in time did I say that I would not be will­ing or did not want to at­tend,” Sobers said in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.

At Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net brief­ing, Sobers al­so dis­missed con­cerns about the trav­el, say­ing he "had enough Gravol for that" and not­ing he had re­cent­ly trav­elled by boat to Nel­son Is­land.

It comes af­ter Guyana Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali said he sup­ports Bar­nett’s reap­point­ment, adding that the process fol­lowed was con­sis­tent with pre­vi­ous de­ci­sions.

“For the time I am at CARI­COM, we did not fol­low any dif­fer­ent process, and Guyana was part of the de­ci­sion,” Ali said.

Ali met Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and a Trinidad and To­ba­go del­e­ga­tion, in­clud­ing Sobers, in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day. A re­lease from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter made no ref­er­ence to the CARI­COM dis­pute.

It said dis­cus­sions fo­cused on food se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy in­te­gra­tion, tech­nol­o­gy ex­change, hu­man cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment, se­cu­ri­ty and the re­moval of trade bar­ri­ers.

Both sides al­so agreed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar will make an of­fi­cial vis­it to Guyana, and that a joint work­ing group, in­clud­ing pri­vate sec­tor rep­re­sen­ta­tives, will be es­tab­lished to ad­dress de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties be­tween the two coun­tries.