CAS­TRIES, St Lu­cia—The 15-mem­ber Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) has em­ployed a re­gion­al law firm to present its re­sponse to the chal­lenge by Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­gard­ing the reap­point­ment of Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett.

Cari­com chair­man and St Lu­cia Prime Min­is­ter Phillip J Pierre said his re­cent meet­ing with Per­sad-Bisses­sar in Port-of-Spain was “very cor­dial.”

Pierre said, “Ba­si­cal­ly, the Prime Min­is­ter want­ed an up­date. I went to give an up­date on the ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion … and what was the state of play on the opin­ion that the Gov­ern­ment of T&T re­quest­ed on the ap­point­ment of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of Cari­com.

“As you know, the Gov­ern­ment of T&T agreed that they want­ed an ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion from the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) on the ap­point­ment of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al. So we went to up­date each oth­er. I up­dat­ed her as to where we were as Cari­com, and she up­dat­ed me as to what the Gov­ern­ment of T&T was do­ing in terms of ask­ing for that opin­ion. It was a very cor­dial meet­ing.”

He said T&T has pre­pared its po­si­tion, which will be re­viewed by Cari­com’s ex­ter­nal coun­sel, adding that Cari­com’s Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al and coun­sel have ex­cused them­selves from the process.

Pierre said the ex­ter­nal coun­sel has the doc­u­ments and prece­dents re­lat­ing to the ap­point­ment of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al and that the T&T Gov­ern­ment will present its case to the judges. He gave no in­di­ca­tion of when this would oc­cur.

Cari­com lead­ers agreed at their sum­mit in St Lu­cia last month to seek an ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion from the CCJ af­ter T&T and Ja­maica raised con­cerns about the pro­ce­dure used to reap­point Bar­nett.

T&T has main­tained that its ob­jec­tion “is nei­ther per­son­al nor po­lit­i­cal”.

In her 22-page let­ter to re­gion­al lead­ers, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Port-of-Spain’s po­si­tion “is not di­rect­ed to­wards any in­di­vid­ual,” but rather “it con­cerns the le­gal­i­ty of the process adopt­ed, the in­tegri­ty of our in­sti­tu­tions and the faith­ful ob­ser­vance of the con­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work es­tab­lished by the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas”.

She said her ad­min­is­tra­tion “does not ac­cept the process by which the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al was pur­port­ed­ly reap­point­ed, and con­se­quent­ly, is un­able to recog­nise the va­lid­i­ty of the pur­port­ed sec­ond term of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al.”

The CCJ said late last month that it had not re­ceived an of­fi­cial re­quest for an ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion from Cari­com re­gard­ing Bar­nett’s reap­point­ment.

“While the Court is not yet in re­ceipt of any of­fi­cial re­quest for an Ad­vi­so­ry Opin­ion from Cari­com, it takes note of the in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main that such a re­quest may be forth­com­ing,” the CCJ said.

The court said that with­in 14 days of re­ceiv­ing a re­quest, its Reg­is­trar would serve copies on all mem­ber states and the Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al.

“Any en­ti­ty which has been served shall be en­ti­tled to make writ­ten sub­mis­sions to the CCJ with­in 42 days of be­ing served,” it said, adding that in ac­cor­dance with its in­ter­nal pro­ce­dures an ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion will or­di­nar­i­ly be is­sued no lat­er than six months af­ter the hear­ing.