Prof Hamid Ghany

As the Cari­com cov­er-up of the Brent Thomas scan­dal now spreads to the sur­rep­ti­tious re-elec­tion of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, the or­gan­i­sa­tion is se­cur­ing the sup­port of those Heads of Gov­ern­ment who were in pow­er at the time of the af­fair to go in to bat for her.

The re­spect­ful treat­ment giv­en to a cur­rent Cari­com Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, who has been pro­vid­ed with con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion about which he says his sources are “100 per cent re­li­able” about the process­es of the last Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing, is note­wor­thy.

Such treat­ment was de­nied to Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar when she was the T&T op­po­si­tion leader be­tween 2015 and 2025. In her let­ter to the said Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al on May 13, 2023, seek­ing in­for­ma­tion about the 2022 Brent Thomas ab­duc­tion, she was met with stony si­lence. That let­ter was al­so copied to Ba­hami­an Prime Min­is­ter Phillip Davis (then Cari­com Chair­man) and Cari­com IM­PACS ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Lt Col Michael Jones.

When she be­came Prime Min­is­ter last year, against the ex­pec­ta­tions of Cari­com lead­ers, she went to the Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in Feb­ru­ary this year and lift­ed the lid on Cari­com’s dirty lit­tle se­cret about Brent Thomas. The rea­son why it is a dirty lit­tle se­cret is be­cause no one wants to talk about it, no one wants to go on the record about it and the same Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al was clan­des­tine­ly re-elect­ed with­out the in­put from three Cari­com coun­tries while she stayed silent.

If a three-fourths ma­jor­i­ty was re­quired among the 15 full mem­ber states, then 12 votes were re­quired to ef­fect a re-ap­point­ment. Ho­n­our­ing the vot­ing rules of Ar­ti­cle 29 by adopt­ing the ap­proach that three from 15 will leave 12 sounds more like Dr Er­ic Williams’ one from ten will leave ze­ro.

The fact that An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, The Ba­hamas and Trinidad and To­ba­go were not in­vit­ed to the se­cret ses­sion where the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al was re-elect­ed al­lowed the sit­ting Cari­com Chair­man to pre­side over the trav­es­ty which is now be­ing sold to us as prop­er gov­er­nance. Per­haps, they think we are gullible.

The Prime Min­is­ters of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da (Gas­ton Browne) and The Ba­hamas (Phillip Davis) have not of­fered any com­ment as they are both cur­rent­ly fac­ing gen­er­al elec­tions. In the case of Davis, he re­ceived a copy of Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s let­ter as the then Cari­com Chair­man. This mat­ter may arise on the hus­tings for both Davis and Browne.

The fact that they, like Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, had left the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing ear­ly meant that there would have been des­ig­nat­ed Heads of Del­e­ga­tion. How would it have looked if those two were in­vit­ed and T&T was left out? There was no choice but to leave all three out and then try to spread a wicked mis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign that the T&T For­eign Min­is­ter suf­fered from sea sick­ness, so he could not at­tend.

This is Cari­com gut­ter pol­i­tics try­ing to pro­tect the ques­tion­able re-elec­tion of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al. As the de­fend­ers of the flawed process and the com­pro­mised Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al be­gin to line up in pub­lic one by one, the care­ful­ly chore­o­graphed strat­e­gy of timed pub­lic en­dorse­ments by Heads of Gov­ern­ment to val­i­date the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al has start­ed. The weeks of si­lence have now been bro­ken, first by Guyana, then by the hit piece on ra­dio from the Vin­cent­ian Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. Who will be next?

The Chair­man of Cari­com finds him­self hav­ing to save his skin from the stain of pre­sid­ing over a cooked-up process. His po­lit­i­cal rep­u­ta­tion is on the line. All of the but­ter­ing up of Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­fore the sum­mit in St Kitts and Nevis, with his per­son­al vis­it to Port-of-Spain to meet her ahead of the meet­ing, can now be viewed as the start of the cov­er-up of the Brent Thomas scan­dal.

When Per­sad-Bisses­sar hit the stage at the con­fer­ence in Feb­ru­ary and dropped the bomb­shell on the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al about the cov­er-up in the Cari­com IM­PACS ab­duc­tion of Brent Thomas, it was ob­vi­ous that a Plan B was re­quired among Cari­com lead­ers.

Plan B was to hur­ried­ly ad­vance the re-elec­tion of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al from Ju­ly to Feb­ru­ary, on the spur of the mo­ment, which is why it was not on the of­fi­cial agen­da. The re­quired three-fourths ma­jor­i­ty could be achieved with T&T, Ba­hamas and An­tigua be­ing left out be­cause it was known that their lead­ers were leav­ing ear­ly. How would it have looked if two out of the three were in­vit­ed and T&T alone was left out? Many drew, or could have drawn, the con­clu­sion that this was a Caribbean fix-up.

The re­fusal of the in­vi­ta­tion to Min­is­ter Sobers was aired on CNC3 last Thurs­day. Sea sick­ness was a ruse.

Brent Thomas will con­tin­ue to re­main a stain on Cari­com and its Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al. This game is far from over.

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.