By Staff Writer
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Mar 29, CMC – A former assistant secretary general (ASG) of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Joseph Cox, is raising questions regarding the re-appointment of Dr. Carla Barnett as the Secretary General of the 15-member regional integration grouping.
“Can Dr. Cala Barnett effectively serve another five-year term in the face of open objection, procedural concerns, and underlying divergence among member states, because in CARICOM, and indeed in small-state regionalism more broadly, authority is not imposed,” said Cox, who resigned as the ASG for Economic Integration, Innovation and Development in August 202
“It is conferred through consensus, reinforced through process, and sustained through trust. Remove those pillars, and the position may remain legally intact. But operationally, it becomes far more difficult to hold.
“And that is the real issue now confronting the community. These are not procedural questions. They are questions of institutional direction and institutional credibility,” Cox said in his weekly Caribbean Business Review (CBR) podcast on Sunday.
Last week, 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 has insisted that it was not “invited” to the deliberations that led Barnett’s re-appointment, with Port of Spain adding that Antigua and Barbuda and The Bahamas were also absent.
“I emphatically put on the record…that Trinidad and Tobago was not invited by email, telephone, or in person to that meeting where that particular decision was made,” CARICOM and Foreign Affairs Minister Sean Sobers told the Trinidad and Tobago Parliament last Friday.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who left the Basseterre summit before the retreat of regional leaders on Nevis, has since threatened to withdraw funding for CARICOM.
Cox, who served as the Guyana-based CARICCOM Secretariat for nine years, said that on the surface, the re-appointment of Barnett appears to have been “a routine decision, one that ensures continuity at the administrative level of the community.
“But the reality is far more complex. Trinidad and Tobago has formally objected to the re-appointment, not based on personality, but on the basis of process, arguing that it was excluded from deliberations and that the matter was neither placed on the formal agenda nor recorded in the official communiqué. ”
Cox said the statement by Port of Spain that, along with The Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda, they were also not allowed to participate in the retreat where these discussions reportedly took place, effectively left “multiple member states outside of a decision of significant institutional importance.
“Further, additional information coming to hand also indicates that Haiti and Montserrat were also not represented at the leaders’ retreat at the highest level, and that matters because this is not just about participation, it’s about proportionality and influence.