The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter has an­nounced that it is with­draw­ing T&T's can­di­da­ture for the Of­fice of Sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Com­mon­wealth, a po­si­tion for which for­mer Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie was rec­om­mend­ed.

In a state­ment re­leased this morn­ing, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter said it will­now be sup­port­ing the the can­di­date from An­tigua and Bar­bu­da. It says this comes in light of three can­di­datescom­ing out of dif­fer­ent Cari­com coun­tries.

The fol­low­ing is the full state­ment from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter:

"Over re­cent months sev­er­al re­ports have ap­peared in the me­dia sur­round­ing the fact that CARI­COM Gov­ern­ments have not been able to reach con­sen­sus on a sin­gle can­di­date to stand for elec­tion to the Of­fice of Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Com­mon­wealth. The elec­tion to that Of­fice will take place, in cau­cus, when Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet in Valalia, Mal­ta, over the pe­ri­od 27th � 29th No­vem­ber, 2015.

There ex­ists a broad­ly held view that by virtue of ro­ta­tion among the ge­o­graph­ic re­gions com­pris­ing the Com­mon­wealth, it is the Caribbean's turn to as­sume the man­tle of lead­er­ship of the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at. Con­sid­er­ing that the African re­gion has en­dorsed a sin­gle can­di­date, the Caribbean's best chances of pre­vail­ing in this con­test would be to co­a­lesce around a sin­gle strong can­di­date.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the sit­u­a­tion in our re­gion is quite dif­fer­ent, with three Mem­bers of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty hav­ing mount­ed can­di­dates, name­ly, Sir Ronald Sanders of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Baroness Par­ti­cia Scot­land of Ash­tal, a Do­mini­can - born sit­ting life Peer in the British House of Lords , on be­half of Do­mini­ca and Dr. Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie, the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment in the for­mer Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

As we en­ter the pe­ri­od of height­ened fo­cus on the de­tailed prepa­ra­tions for Trinidad and To­ba­go's par­tic­i­pa­tion in the CHOGM, in which we in­tend to play an ac­tive role con­sis­tent with our long stand­ing pol­i­cy of en­gage­ment, I con­sid­er it ap­pro­pri­ate to clar­i­fy the po­si­tion of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go in this mat­ter.

In that re­gard, I should like to ad­vise that through the ap­pro­pri­ate diplo­mat­ic chan­nels, the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Com­mon­wealth has been to­day ad­vised, by let­ter, that Trinidad and To­ba­go has ex­er­cised its dis­cre­tion to for­mal­ly with­draw its can­di­da­ture for the Of­fice of Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al.

Af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of all per­ti­nent as­pects of the mat­ter, it is the de­ci­sion of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to give its full sup­port to the can­di­date of the Gov­ern­ment of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, who we be­lieve is best placed to ex­e­cute the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the Of­fice of Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al in a man­ner that would be a trib­ute to the Peo­ples of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty.

It is our hope that oth­ers in our re­gion will in the lim­it­ed time left, make com­mon cause by uni­fy­ing our re­gion around Sir Ronald's can­di­da­ture."