Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany

Last Tues­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar scored a ma­jor diplo­mat­ic coup at the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in St Lu­cia. Her pro­pos­al to use the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) in its orig­i­nal ju­ris­dic­tion un­der Ar­ti­cle 212 of the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas to pro­vide an ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion on the re-elec­tion of the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al was a shot that no one saw com­ing.

The lo­cal, re­gion­al and di­as­poric com­men­tari­at had vil­i­fied her for months over her prin­ci­pled po­si­tion that the cur­rent Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, Dr Car­la Bar­nett, was im­prop­er­ly reap­point­ed back in Feb­ru­ary this year. She stuck to her guns, and they stuck to theirs. Some of them even went so far as to say that if she wants T&T to leave Cari­com, then she should just go.

Their my­opic ap­proach in adopt­ing the clas­sic hege­mon­ic cul­ture of re­gion­al pol­i­tics could nev­er en­vis­age a strat­e­gy of uni­ty in dis­agree­ment, on­ly di­vi­sion. It was al­ways about their view that Cari­com is for the elites, not the re­gion­al pop­u­la­tion, and every­body else had to take what­ev­er they dished out.

It is that mind­set that has cursed re­gion­al re­la­tions for decades, ever since Dr Er­ic Williams and Pro­fes­sor Arthur Lewis fell out over Lewis’ de­sire for re­gion­al uni­ty and Williams’ de­sire to break up the Fed­er­a­tion in 1962. Williams got his wish and Lewis lost.

So last week, along comes Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in her sec­ond in­car­na­tion as PM of T&T, to of­fer the one so­lu­tion that can fix the mess that the as­sem­bled politi­cians made in Nevis back in Feb­ru­ary with­out T&T, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, The Ba­hamas and Montser­rat be­ing present.

We, as Caribbean peo­ple, were ex­pect­ed to ac­cept that kind of hege­mon­ic be­hav­iour with­in Cari­com, while the then Chair­man, PM Dr Ter­rence Drew, did not make any ref­er­ence to it in the Sum­mit com­mu­niqué on March 1. Out of the blue, he put out a state­ment on March 25 to say that the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al had been re-ap­point­ed by the Heads who were present in Nevis.

It was a shame­ful act of hege­mon­ic dom­i­nance, and the re­gion was ex­pect­ed to take it or leave it. Con­tro­ver­sial­ly, the bu­reau­crats in Cari­com al­lowed the politi­cians to over­ride them back in Feb­ru­ary in Nevis. The Chef de Cab­i­net, Jan­ice Miller, con­firmed that the is­sue of the elec­tion of a Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al was nev­er on the agen­da, yet some re­gion­al Heads of Gov­ern­ment were de­ter­mined to rail­road this de­ci­sion over the rest of us in Cari­com.

Well, all of that has been un­done with the mas­ter­stroke of the let­ter from the PM of T&T that laid out the case for ac­cept­ing the im­pro­pri­ety and propos­ing that it be re­ferred to the CCJ for an ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion. The glum faces around Chair­man PM Philip Pierre of St Lu­cia when he read out the an­nounce­ment of the re­fer­ral were a pic­ture that told a thou­sand words of dis­ap­point­ment.

Hav­ing to con­cede on this mat­ter was a ma­jor blow to the ma­jor­i­ty, who were in­sist­ing that they were right. They un­der­es­ti­mat­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who has served more time in op­po­si­tion than in gov­ern­ment. She un­der­stood clear­ly how to fight this bat­tle, and she was able to show that as a mi­nor­i­ty of one, she could over­come their flawed ma­jor­i­ty de­ci­sion and she got them to all agree with her pro­pos­al. The Op­po­si­tion here had called up­on re­gion­al lead­ers to “re­sist” any at­tempt by Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­vive the mat­ter. They ig­nored that call.

She solved the prob­lem for the re­gion. Yet, it was dif­fi­cult for some to ac­cept that it was her ini­tia­tive that gave Cari­com an off-ramp and she took it, too. She has al­so in­di­cat­ed that whichev­er way the CCJ ad­vis­es, she is pre­pared to ac­cept it as fi­nal. Hope­ful­ly, the oth­ers will adopt that ap­proach.

The use of the orig­i­nal ju­ris­dic­tion of the CCJ to re­solve this mat­ter must be sep­a­rat­ed from the ap­pel­late ju­ris­dic­tion of the CCJ. All mem­bers of Cari­com be­long to the CCJ’s orig­i­nal ju­ris­dic­tion, while on­ly five mem­bers of Cari­com have adopt­ed its ap­pel­late ju­ris­dic­tion, which has re­placed the Privy Coun­cil as the fi­nal court of ap­peal. Both Ja­maica and T&T re­main op­posed to the re­moval of the Privy Coun­cil, to­geth­er with the elec­torates of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines (2009), Grena­da (2016 and 2018) and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da (2018) that re­ject­ed its re­place­ment by the CCJ.

When Per­sad-Bisses­sar was PM be­tween 2010 and 2015, she pro­posed that T&T could have ac­ced­ed on­ly to the crim­i­nal ju­ris­dic­tion of the CCJ in 2012. She was round­ly re­ject­ed by re­gion­al au­thor­i­ties, who de­mand­ed all or noth­ing then. Her po­si­tion has since hard­ened and the mat­ter is not up for dis­cus­sion.

What she has done now will save Cari­com from it­self. None of the lead­ers could have re­ject­ed that sim­ple so­lu­tion.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.