Ryan Ba­choo

Prime Min­is­ter of Ja­maica, Dr An­drew Hol­ness, has called for a meet­ing of re­gion­al lead­ers to ad­dress con­cerns sur­round­ing the reap­point­ment of Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, Dr Car­la Bar­nett, say­ing dis­cus­sions are al­ready tak­ing place be­hind the scenes.

Hol­ness said the mat­ter re­quires di­rect en­gage­ment among Heads of Gov­ern­ment with­in Cari­com, as pub­lic com­men­tary con­tin­ues to gen­er­ate un­ease across the re­gion.

“I think the so­lu­tion re­al­ly lies in as­sem­bling an­oth­er heads meet­ing to have the mat­ter ad­dressed,” Hol­ness said. “That’s some­thing that I have been push­ing for qui­et­ly be­hind the scenes. I think it is dis­tress­ing for a lot of per­sons with­in the re­gion re­gard­ing what is be­ing said in the pub­lic do­main, but I know that all the heads are work­ing be­hind the scenes to have this mat­ter re­solved,” said Hol­ness af­ter be­ing ho­n­oured by the Amer­i­can Foun­da­tion for The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (AFUWI) in New York.

Hol­ness in­di­cat­ed that fur­ther diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment is im­mi­nent, adding that he in­tends to con­tact Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as part of on­go­ing con­sul­ta­tions.

The is­sue of Bar­nett’s reap­point­ment has drawn at­ten­tion with­in Cari­com, with dif­fer­ing views emerg­ing among mem­ber states. Hol­ness main­tained that a uni­fied ap­proach is nec­es­sary to re­solve the mat­ter and pre­serve re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion.

The Ja­maican leader’s com­ments come as at­ten­tion al­so turns to fi­nan­cial con­cerns in­volv­ing Caribbean Air­lines and its op­er­a­tions linked to the for­mer Air Ja­maica.

Guardian Me­dia has re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that since Caribbean Air­lines ac­quired Air Ja­maica in 2011, the air­line has record­ed loss­es ex­ceed­ing TT$1.7 bil­lion, equiv­a­lent to ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$255 mil­lion, in man­ag­ing the Ja­maica-based op­er­a­tions. Doc­u­ments ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk showed that unau­dit­ed ac­counts for the pe­ri­od 2012 to 2025 re­flect cu­mu­la­tive loss­es of US$254,709,575.

Hol­ness re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the coun­try has not met its oblig­a­tions.

“The ques­tion, I sup­pose, is Ja­maica not pay­ing its share. Ja­maica makes con­tri­bu­tions, as it can, and I’m not cer­tain that the po­si­tion­ing of not pay­ing its share is cor­rect,” he said.

“There is a re­quest for Ja­maica to make con­tri­bu­tions to the air­line. We val­ue the air­line. It’s very im­por­tant. And there may be oth­er ways in which Ja­maica can sup­port Caribbean Air­lines, and we will be ex­am­in­ing those. So there is a re­quest for sup­port, and we will be con­sid­er­ing that.”

Hol­ness said Ja­maica recog­nis­es the im­por­tance of the air­line to re­gion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, not­ing that dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing re­gard­ing how best to sup­port its sus­tain­abil­i­ty. —Ryan Ba­choo