DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment are con­ven­ing an ur­gent emer­gency meet­ing to­day to ad­dress an es­ca­lat­ing diplo­mat­ic rift sparked by Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­mal protest over the man­ner in which the reap­point­ment of Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Car­la Bar­nett was han­dled.

The meet­ing, orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for April 7 but de­layed due to state fu­ner­al pro­ceed­ings for for­mer Suri­name pres­i­dent Chan San­tokhi, is set for 2 pm, with Cari­com chair and St Kitts and Nevis Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ter­rance Drew ex­press­ing hope for the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The dis­pute cen­ters on al­le­ga­tions from Port-of-Spain that the reap­point­ment was not a for­mal agen­da item dur­ing the 50th Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in St Kitts and Nevis in Feb­ru­ary.

How­ev­er, in a de­tailed de­fence of the bloc’s pro­to­cols in a let­ter to Per­sad-Bisses­sar ahead of the meet­ing, Drew moved to dis­man­tle claims of pro­ce­dur­al am­bi­gu­i­ty, in­sist­ing that all mem­ber states were ful­ly briefed on the sched­ule for ple­nary ses­sions, cau­cus­es and the ex­clu­sive Heads-of-Gov­ern­ment re­treat where the de­ci­sion was fi­nalised.

“As the at­tached Time­line of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion sent to Mem­ber States on the Fifti­eth Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence shows, all Mem­ber States were du­ly in­formed of the Pro­gramme of Events and the Draft Agen­da of the Meet­ing, in­clud­ing which Agen­da Items were pro­grammed to be tak­en in Ple­nary Ses­sions, in Cau­cus, and in the Re­treat of Heads on­ly,” Drew stat­ed in the let­ter, a copy of which Guardian Me­dia has ob­tained.

The chair­man em­pha­sised what the gran­u­lar lev­el of prepa­ra­tion in­volved, not­ing that even the of­fi­cial Cari­com shirts for the re­treat were tai­lored to mea­sure­ments sup­plied by each leader’s of­fice, in­clud­ing that of Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

While the spe­cif­ic reap­point­ment of Bar­nett was not ex­plic­it­ly named as a line item, Drew ar­gued that it fell un­der the stan­dard gov­er­nance pro­to­cols dis­cussed at the re­treat.

“The Pro­gramme of Work for the Re­treat in­clud­ed the fol­low­ing two Agen­da Items of the Con­fer­ence: 11. Geopo­lit­i­cal De­vel­op­ments and 12. Fi­nanc­ing and Gov­er­nance of the Com­mu­ni­ty, the lat­ter which would nor­mal­ly in­clude mat­ters re­lat­ed to fi­nance and op­er­a­tions of the Sec­re­tari­at, and any oth­er mat­ters any Head of Gov­ern­ment may wish to raise.”

Drew al­so high­light­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­part­ed the fed­er­a­tion on the evening of the con­fer­ence’s first day, miss­ing the cru­cial re­treat on Feb­ru­ary 26. He re­vealed that an in­vi­ta­tion was sub­se­quent­ly ex­tend­ed to For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers to rep­re­sent T&T but the of­fer was de­clined.

“I con­sid­ered it im­por­tant for Trinidad and To­ba­go to be present at the Re­treat, so I in­quired whether your For­eign Min­is­ter would be able to par­tic­i­pate. He de­clined an in­vi­ta­tion to at­tend the Re­treat, cit­ing per­son­al is­sues with us­ing the wa­ter taxi tran­sit, which is a stan­dard mode of trans­porta­tion in the Fed­er­a­tion of St Kitts and Nevis. He in­di­cat­ed that he feared he would get sea­sick,” Drew wrote.

The chair in­sist­ed the reap­point­ment was con­duct­ed trans­par­ent­ly and in ac­cor­dance with Ar­ti­cle 24 of the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas. He not­ed that while Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Bar­nett “was not in the room dur­ing the dis­cus­sion of this mat­ter,” mul­ti­ple at­tempts to con­tact Per­sad-Bisses­sar pri­vate­ly fol­low­ing the de­ci­sion were met with si­lence.

“The Meet­ing al­so agreed that I should de­lay the an­nounce­ment so as to in­form, as a mat­ter of cour­tesy, the Heads who were not able to be present at the Re­treat, be­fore the of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment was made. I at­tempt­ed to reach out per­son­al­ly to each of these Heads of Gov­ern­ment, by email and tele­phone calls, to in­form them of the de­ci­sion tak­en but was un­able to speak with you. I did not re­ceive a re­sponse from you to my email and, af­ter some de­lays, I was in­formed that I should speak with your For­eign Min­is­ter.”

Ex­press­ing con­cern over the “pub­lic do­main” re­lease of let­ters and state­ments on what tran­spired dur­ing the Cari­com ses­sion, Drew urged a re­turn to in­ter­nal diplo­mat­ic chan­nels.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fice to con­firm her at­ten­dance at to­day’s emer­gency ses­sion but no re­sponse was re­ceived up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.