By Staff Writer
ROSEAU, Dominica, Sept 9, CMC – Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit Wednesday said he expects the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretary General, Dr. Carla Barnett, to remain in office as the 15-member regional grouping awaits the advisory ruling by the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).
“If my memory serves me right, our decision at CARICOM was that the matter should go to the CCJ and it is not whether she should be the Secretary General, it is whether the process, the procedure was followed in accordance with the revised Treaty of Chaguaramus.
“So it is more of an interpretation of the process, and we all felt that in deference to the concerns raised by the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago (Kamla Persad-Bissessar) that we needed to clarify this matter so that the CCJ would give us an advisory on this,” Skerrit told a news conference here.
Last month, CARICOM chairman and St. Lucia’s Prime Minister Phillip J Pierre held talks in Port of Spain with Persad-Bissessar, providing an “update” regarding her challenge to the re-appointment of Barnett, a Belizean national economist, the first woman to be appointed as CARICOM Secretary General since it was established in 1973.
The CCJ has said it is not in receipt of any official request for an advisory opinion from CARICOM regarding the re-appointment of Barnett.
CARICOM leaders at their summit in St. Lucia in July had agreed to seek an advisory opinion from the CCJ after both Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica had written to them regarding the procedure used in re-appointing Barnett, the first woman to ever hold the post of CARICOM Secretary General.
“While the Court is not yet in receipt of any official request for an Advisory Opinion from CARICOM, it takes note of the information in the public domain that such a request may be forthcoming,” the CCJ said.
It said that “given the public interest in this issue and in response to general questions already raised by the public, the Court considers it helpful and in the public interest” to indicate that “a request for an Advisory Opinion does not involve either adversarial or contentious proceedings.
“In responding to a request for an Advisory Opinion, the Court’s remit is to entertain submissions from interested parties and furnish a legal opinion to answer the question(s) contained in the request.”
The CCJ said that within 14 days of receipt of a request for an Advisory Opinion, the Registrar of the Court shall serve copies of the request on all member states and the Secretary General of the CARICOM.
“Any entity which has been served shall be entitled to make written submissions to the CCJ within 42 days of being served,” it said, adding that “in accordance with its internal procedures, an Advisory Opinion will ordinarily be issued no later than six (6) months after the hearing”.
Prime Minister Skerrit told reporters that courts do provide advisory opinions “telling you this is how the process will follow, so that going forward, we all know that this is the process to follow in respect to the appointment of the Secretary General”.
Barnett’s second term as Secretary General began this month, and Skerrit told reporters that the Secretary General “will continue” in office, reiterating that the CCJ “will examine the process.
“This is why we agreed at the heads that we wouldn’t have different lawyers representing different people. That one lawyer would be engaged, and the Senior Counsel from St. Lucia has been engaged on this, who will get the submissions from all parties, and he will go before the CCJ to present the submissions from all parties.
“So one person will represent all of the issues, because there are no arguments back and forth. This is what was done to appoint the Secretary General; this is the settled practice. Trinidad will have its own submission, and then he will take that and present it, and then the judges will decide on what is the best process to follow,” Skerrit added.
CMC/cj/ir/2026