Antigua backs Barnett as CARICOM reappointment row deepens

Director General for Communications in the Prime Minister’s Office says the Cabinet has full confidence in Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretary General Dr Carla Barnett, even as a dispute over the process that produced her reappointment for a second term continues to roil the 15-member regional bloc.

Director General for Communications in the Prime Minister’s Office, Maurice Merchant, confirmed the government’s position at Thursday’s post-Cabinet media briefing.

“The Cabinet of Antigua and Barbuda has very high confidence in her ability to carry out her duties and responsibilities as she has been doing effectively during her tenure thus far,” Merchant said.

The declaration comes against a backdrop of significant regional turbulence.

CARICOM Chairman and St Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Dr Terrance Drew announced on March 25 that the “required majority” of heads of government had agreed to reappoint Barnett for a second five-year term beginning in August 2026, when her current term concludes.

The announcement came via a press release, with no record of the decision appearing in the official summary of confirmed decisions circulated by the CARICOM Secretariat on March 2.

According to Trinidad and Tobago’s Minister of Foreign and CARICOM Affairs, Sean Sobers, the reappointment was not placed on the provisional agenda for the fiftieth regular meeting of the conference, was not discussed by the Community Council — the second highest decision-making body in CARICOM — and did not arise during the plenary sessions of the summit held in Basseterre from February 24 to 27.

Sobers told his country’s Parliament that the matter was instead taken up at a private leaders’ retreat on Nevis on February 26, from which Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, and The Bahamas were excluded after their leaders had departed.

“I emphatically put on the record that Trinidad and Tobago was not invited by email, telephone or in person to that meeting where that particular decision was made,” Sobers said.

Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has since formally rejected the reappointment on both substantive and procedural grounds, characterising the process as a breach of Article 24 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, which requires that the Secretary General be appointed by the conference on the recommendation of the Community Council.

Persad-Bissessar has also threatened to reduce Trinidad and Tobago’s financial contribution to CARICOM, which currently stands at approximately 22 percent of the regional body’s budget, or between US$4 million and US$5 million annually.

Former CARICOM Assistant Secretary General Joseph Cox has publicly questioned whether Barnett can govern effectively under these circumstances.

“In CARICOM, and indeed in small state regionalism more broadly, authority is not imposed. It is conferred through consensus, reinforced through process and sustained through trust. Remove those pillars and the position may remain legally intact. But operationally, it becomes far more difficult to hold,” Cox said.

Barnett herself has not commented publicly on the controversy surrounding her reappointment.

The matter is expected to remain a point of contention ahead of the next CARICOM summit, scheduled for St Lucia from July 5 to 8, 2026.