PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) — Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar says the country will not recognise Dr Carla Barnett as the Caribbean Community (Caricom) secretary general (SG) after August, when her first five-year term ends, even as regional countries maintained that she had been reappointed to the position for another five years.

“Trinidad and Tobago only recognises Barnett as SG until the end of her term this August 2026. All Caricom leaders could do as they please, but Trinidad and Tobago will not recognise her as SG for a next term. That’s not going to change,” Persad-Bissessar told the Trinidad Express newspaper.

“We have already made that clear. We do not recognise her after August 2026. This is our final position,” she added.

Last week, Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said as far as he is concerned, the Belizean economist had been reappointed and that Dominica had supported the decision.

“The issue of the secretary general, this has been, I’m not sure why you asked me the question, but this thing has been ventilated in the public domain. I mean, every plate and spoon in the kitchen has been exposed on this matter,” Skerrit told a news conference last Wednesday.

On Monday, the Trinidad Guardian newspaper reported that Caricom leaders met last weekend for a five-hour discussion regarding Trinidad and Tobago’s concerns on the reappointment of Barnett, agreeing not to redo their February process and decision on Barnett’s appointment.

The Trinidad Express newspaper reported Wednesday that representatives from the Ministry of Foreign and Caricom Affairs had raised objections, noting that the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and Caricom Affairs, Sean Sobers, were not present because of the official visit of India’s Minister of External Affairs, Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and parliamentary obligations.

In March, 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 regional leaders regarding her re-appointment at February’s Caricom summit held in Basseterre.

But Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar, who was not present when the vote was taken to reappoint Barnett, who became the eighth Caricom secretary general on August 15, 2021, has publicly challenged the reappointment process.

She has dismissed a statement issued by Prime Minister Drew, which reiterated that Trinidad and Tobago was not “uninvited” to the retreat in Nevis where the decision was taken.

Persad-Bissessar told the Trinidad Express newspaper that while her country remains committed to the regional integration movement, it will not stay silent on what she said was the “dysfunctional and chaotic state” of the 52-year-old organisation and on Barnett’s reappointment.

The prime minister, in a social media post last month, had criticised Caricom after revealing that Barnett authored a statement issued by Prime Minister Drew defending her reappointment.

Asked whether she received any response to her questions about the secretary general authoring the Caricom press release or the text message sent to Sobers disinviting him from the retreat, Persad-Bissessar said she did not.

“No, they are still hiding from providing responses. It’s really shameful that the entire group knows that Barnett did disinvite Minister Sobers via WhatsApp, but they still persist in continuing with dishonesty.

“Everyone also knows that Barnett authored Chairman Drew’s Caricom press release to clear herself and deliberately left out her WhatsApp message disinviting Minister Sobers, that’s still on the COFCOR (Council for Foreign and Community Relations) WhatsApp group, by the way,” she told the newspaper.

Persad-Bisessar said that she is also not in favour of the matter going before the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), saying Port of Spain does not use the CCJ as its final court of appeal, and her Government will never move to make the CCJ the country’s final court of appeal.

She also said that her administration would not be bothered if the country is booted out of Caricom.

“They are free to do as they wish. I’m not bothered. We have already made our position clear; they are free to expel us from Caricom if they wish to do so. They are free to work with us if they wish to do so. Life goes on in Trinidad and Tobago, with or without Caricom. The world stops for no one,” she said.

Persad-Bissessar said that Trinidad and Tobago is now working on exploring other markets and expanding its trade relations.

“We are not sitting and depending on Caricom as a trade market. We are actively working to expand our trade network with the Middle East, South America, India and Africa,” she said, adding that Port of Spain will attend future Caricom meetings. “Trinidad and Tobago has always been represented by someone at Caricom meetings, except when we are sent WhatsApp messages by the SG disinviting us.”