‘Disinvited’: Sobers claims T&T surreptitiously excluded from Caricom vote

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

The Gov­ern­ment is now push­ing for a spe­cial meet­ing of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment to chal­lenge the reap­point­ment of Dr Car­la Bar­nett as Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, sig­nalling that fresh elec­tions are al­so firm­ly on the ta­ble. This, af­ter it was re­vealed yes­ter­day that this coun­try was de­lib­er­ate­ly “dis­in­vit­ed” from the vot­ing process.

The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go claims it was “sur­rep­ti­tious­ly” ex­clud­ed from the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process, al­leg­ing that the reap­point­ment oc­curred with­out be­ing on the of­fi­cial agen­da and with­out an in­vi­ta­tion for T&T to par­tic­i­pate in the de­lib­er­a­tions.

On Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared that she will “ruth­less­ly” pur­sue the mat­ter.

Yes­ter­day, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers said that af­ter send­ing three of­fi­cial let­ters to Cari­com and be­ing the largest con­trib­u­tor to Cari­com’s bud­get, no ac­knowl­edge­ment is “very, very trou­bling.”

Sobers said this un­der­scores what the Prime Min­is­ter has been say­ing, that Cari­com is not be­ing run “op­ti­mal­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly.”

Asked what comes next, Sobers said T&T will this week for­mal­ly re­quest a meet­ing of Cari­com’s Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil, the body com­pris­ing all For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ters across the re­gion.

But as he ex­plained, that will be step one.

“Once the Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil meets, the Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil then will ei­ther agree or dis­agree that this mat­ter is good enough or im­por­tant enough that it be raised to the lev­el of Heads of Gov­ern­ment, which is a con­fer­ence for their de­lib­er­a­tion and for a de­ci­sion to be adopt­ed.”

Min­is­ter Sobers added, “More than like­ly, what would be asked is that we need to have the heads dis­cuss this mat­ter and de­cide or de­ter­mine the way for­ward, which would be sug­gest­ed has to be the con­fer­ence that will deal with ei­ther the reap­point­ment or the elec­tion of a new Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al.”

The For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment has no is­sue with Dr Car­la Bar­nett per­son­al­ly, but rather with the pro­ce­dure that was fol­lowed.

Sobers said this was no mere over­sight by Cari­com, but he claimed that T&T was de­lib­er­ate­ly dis­in­vit­ed to the re­treat in Nevis where the re-elec­tion was rat­i­fied.

The min­is­ter said Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was not the on­ly Prime Min­is­ter who left the Cari­com meet­ing ear­ly.

“I would have been del­e­gat­ed as Head of Del­e­ga­tion. The For­eign Min­is­ter of The Ba­hamas would have been del­e­gat­ed as Head of Del­e­ga­tion. The Am­bas­sador to Cari­com from An­tigua and Bar­bu­da was del­e­gat­ed as Head of Del­e­ga­tion. None of us were in­vit­ed to at­tend the re­treat. As a mat­ter of fact, we were all dis­in­vit­ed. We were told that we were not able to at­tend, which is a breach of the treaty.”

Cit­ing the treaty, Sobers said, “A Head of Gov­ern­ment can del­e­gate any­body to at­tend as a des­ig­nat­ed au­thor­i­ty on the coun­try’s be­half at a con­fer­ence and take the rel­e­vant de­ci­sions that they need to take as if they were the Head. It is in the re­vised treaty. It is there, plain and sim­ple. For the Sec­re­tari­at to dis­in­vite us, that was ex­treme­ly dis­re­spect­ful.”

Guardian Me­dia ex­am­ined the treaty, and Ar­ti­cle 11 (2) does state, “Any Head of Gov­ern­ment may des­ig­nate a Min­is­ter or oth­er per­son to rep­re­sent him or her at any Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence.”

There seems to be no clear dis­tinc­tion in the Treaty be­tween a Head and their des­ig­nate in terms of vot­ing once prop­er­ly rep­re­sent­ing the State.

Mean­ing the re­vised Treaty al­lows a Prime Min­is­ter to ap­point a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Cari­com Con­fer­ence, and that rep­re­sen­ta­tive may ex­er­cise the Mem­ber State’s vote.

This may be sup­port­ed by Ar­ti­cle 27 (1), which states, “Sub­ject to para­graph 2 of this Ar­ti­cle, each Mem­ber State rep­re­sent­ed on Com­mu­ni­ty Or­gans and Bod­ies shall have one vote.”

Sobers could not say if this coun­try is mov­ing ahead with with­draw­ing or re­duc­ing its fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tions to Cari­com as threat­ened by the Prime Min­is­ter. In a state­ment to Par­lia­ment in March, Sobers said that it could be in the range of $120 mil­lion per an­num. Sobers said it would be for the Prime Min­is­ter to make such a de­ci­sion.

Ef­forts were made via What­sApp to con­tact the Prime Min­is­ter on this mat­ter; how­ev­er, she did not re­spond be­fore press time.

Mean­while, Sobers chal­lenged the crit­ics who said that had Per­sad-Bisses­sar stayed for the en­tire four-day meet­ing in St Kitts and Nevis, she would have been there when the tenure of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al came up.

The min­is­ter said, “I did put to you that about five heads left. So, the re­sult would not have been dif­fer­ent. It wouldn’t have changed the price of peas if the Prime Min­is­ter was there or not at the end of the day; I was head of the del­e­ga­tion, so I should have been al­lowed to at­tend.”

Guardian Me­dia has made re­peat­ed at­tempts to ob­tain com­ment from Cari­com Chair Dr Ter­rence Drew and Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett; how­ev­er, emails and text mes­sages have gone unan­swered to date.