Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Pro­fes­sor Ra­jen­dra Ram­lo­gan is urg­ing that the reap­point­ment of Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett be tak­en to the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice.

Ram­lo­gan did so in a Face­book post ahead of to­mor­row's (SUN) start of Cari­com's 51st con­fer­ence. This is in St Lu­cia. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is at­tend­ing.

At the last con­fer­ence in St Kitts, lead­ers at the re­treat in Nevis con­firmed the reap­point­ment of Cari­com SG Dr Car­la Bar­nett for an­oth­er five-year term af­ter her cur­rent term ends in Au­gust. Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ab­sent from the Nevis re­treat. She sub­se­quent­ly protest­ed that the reap­point­ment process didn't con­form to Cari­com's Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas.

Cari­com's chair­man then, St Kitts PM Ter­rance Drew, de­tailed how the process was done prop­er­ly. Lead­ers held two meet­ings on the is­sue. Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not at­tend ei­ther. At lead­ers' last meet­ing on May 8, they stood by the reap­point­ment and the mat­ter was closed. Per­sad-Bisses­sar, stand­ing by her con­cerns, said her fi­nal po­si­tion was that Gov­ern­ment wouldn't recog­nise Bar­nett af­ter Au­gust. On sug­ges­tions that the mat­ter be tak­en be­fore the CCJ, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said TT doesn't use the CCJ as its fi­nal court of ap­peal, and her Gov­ern­ment will nev­er make the CCJ such a court.

Ram­lo­gan last week sub­mit­ted a le­gal opin­ion on the reap­point­ment, which he said was "con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly de­fec­tive."

Af­ter Op­po­si­tion PNM Sen­a­tor Amery Browne on Thurs­day urged the PM against re­viv­ing the SG is­sue at the up­com­ing con­fer­ence, Ram­lo­gan said on Face­book, "On one point, I read­i­ly agree with Dr Browne. Cari­com faces enor­mous chal­lenges. Venezuela's hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion, food se­cu­ri­ty, cli­mate re­silience, re­gion­al trade and the fu­ture of the Caribbean Sin­gle Mar­ket de­serve the ur­gent at­ten­tion of our Heads of Gov­ern­ment.

"But that's pre­cise­ly why the is­sue be­fore Cari­com can­not sim­ply be swept un­der the car­pet. The rule of law is not a dis­trac­tion from re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion. It is its foun­da­tion."

Ram­lo­gan said, as an aca­d­e­m­ic, he had no po­lit­i­cal in­ter­est in who oc­cu­pies pub­lic of­fice, and his con­cern had al­ways been whether pub­lic pow­er is ex­er­cised law­ful­ly. He said his le­gal opin­ion, writ­ten with the as­sis­tance of three young law stu­dents, was pre­pared in­de­pen­dent­ly on a pro bono ba­sis be­cause he be­lieved the is­sues raised by the SG's reap­point­ment con­cern Cari­com's "con­sti­tu­tion­al ar­chi­tec­ture", not any gov­ern­ment's for­tunes.

He said the opin­ion ex­press­ly states that the con­tro­ver­sy ex­tends far be­yond the tenure of a sin­gle of­fice hold­er.

"The cen­tral ques­tion is whether the con­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work es­tab­lished by the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas re­mains bind­ing up­on all Mem­ber States and in­sti­tu­tions, or whether pro­ce­dur­al con­ve­nience may re­place treaty dis­ci­pline.

"If the le­gal opin­ion is wrong, then demon­strate where it is wrong. Show why Ar­ti­cle 24 doesn't re­quire the in­volve­ment of the Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil. Show why Ar­ti­cle 11 does not pro­tect the right of des­ig­nat­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Show why a Heads-on­ly Re­treat, from which des­ig­nat­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives were ex­clud­ed, nev­er­the­less sat­is­fied every con­sti­tu­tion­al re­quire­ment for a Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence. Show why una­nim­i­ty un­der Ar­ti­cle 28 was sat­is­fied. Show why the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al's ad­min­is­tra­tive in­volve­ment in com­mu­ni­ca­tions af­fect­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion cre­at­ed no ap­pear­ance of con­flict.

"In­stead, much of the crit­i­cism has con­cen­trat­ed up­on whether the Prime Min­is­ter left the (St Kitts) con­fer­ence ear­ly. Even if one as­sumes that was po­lit­i­cal­ly un­wise, it doesn't an­swer the le­gal is­sues. The law has nev­er been that pro­ce­dur­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties be­come law­ful be­cause some­one was ab­sent."

Ram­lo­gan said the most dis­ap­point­ing sug­ges­tion is that TT should sim­ply let the mat­ter rest for the sake of re­gion­al har­mo­ny.

"His­to­ry teach­es pre­cise­ly the op­po­site. Re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions be­come stronger, not weak­er, when their le­gal foun­da­tions are test­ed and clar­i­fied. The CCJ was cre­at­ed for pre­cise­ly these mo­ments. The Orig­i­nal Ju­ris­dic­tion ex­ists so that dis­agree­ments over the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Re­vised Treaty may be re­solved by judges rather than politi­cians. There is noth­ing an­ti-Cari­com about ask­ing the Court to in­ter­pret the Treaty. On the con­trary, there is noth­ing more pro-Cari­com."

Ram­lo­gan said those urg­ing that the is­sue not be raised to pre­serve re­gion­al uni­ty may in­ad­ver­tent­ly weak­en the very in­sti­tu­tion they seek to pro­tect.