CARICOM’s Rules: For Everyone or For No One

Editor: The Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas establishes consensus as the basis on which the Conference of Heads of Government conducts its most important business. The Treaty itself charges the Bureau of the Conference with maintaining that consensus among Member States. The Rules of Procedure translate this into a concrete obligation: consensus must be sought before any vote is taken. Voting is a last resort, not a first option. That is the architecture of decision-making that CARICOM’s founders chose, and it is the standard against which the purported reappointment of the Secretary-General at the February 2026 Summit must be measured.

A statement published on the CARICOM website on 25 March announced that Secretary-General Barnett had been reappointed at the 50th Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM with the required majority. The decision was specifically taken at a Heads Retreat on February 26 in Nevis. Five Member States had no Head of Government in that room: Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Haiti, Montserrat, and Trinidad and Tobago.

After Prime Minister Drew’s statement, Trinidad and Tobago’s public objection followed from the floor of their Parliament. The CARICOM Chairman, Prime Minister Drew of St Kitts and Nevis, wrote to Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar on April 8. That letter, now widely circulating on social media, asserts the Secretary-General’s reappointment was on the agenda, covered under agenda item 12, ‘Financing and Governance of the Community’. That assertion does not defend the process. It condemns it.

‘Financing and Governance of the Community’ is a standing procedural item for the routine administrative and financial business of the Community. The reappointment of a Secretary-General is a substantive, non-procedural decision of the highest order, it is not routine business. The Treaty prescribes specific requirements for decisions of this nature. Subsuming this matter within a routine procedural heading, moreso without notice, satisfies none of them. What the Chairman’s own letter confirms precisely is what was absent: a named decision item that would have signalled to every Member State that this matter was to be deliberated, and allowed them to come prepared.

On the question of participation, Prime Minister Drew’s letter states that an inquiry was made about whether Trinidad and Tobago’s Foreign Minister could attend the Retreat. He does not say he made this contact personally, nor does he identify who he inquired with. More importantly, nowhere in the letter does it say the Foreign Minister was told that the reappointment of the Secretary-General was the reason his attendance was being sought. And it raises a question left entirely unanswered: were the delegations of the other four absent Member States, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Haiti, and Montserrat, similarly contacted? If the Chairman felt Trinidad and Tobago’s presence mattered, that logic extended to every other Member State without a Head in the room.

On the matter of the announcement, the letter states the Meeting agreed to delay it only as a matter of courtesy, so that absent Heads could be informed before it was made. That is a remarkable admission. The decision was not being held open for confirmation. The only question was the timing of the press release. The contact with absent Heads was not consultation. It was advance notice of a conclusion already reached. In doubling down on that position, the Chairman is not defending a process. He is confirming that no valid one existed.

Also noted in the letter is that the Secretary-General was not in the room during the discussion of her reappointment. A Secretary-General does not typically arrive at a summit unaware that his/her own tenure is under consideration. It is reported that Secretary-General Barnett’s contract comes to an end in August of this year. That being so, the question of her reappointment was foreseeable well in advance of the February Summit. If the discussion of the Secretary-General’s reappointment at the Retreat was not unplanned, the question of who knew, and when, and why that knowledge was not shared in advance with all those whose Treaty right it was to deliberate, is one the Community cannot indefinitely avoid.

The numbers tell their own story. A photograph of the Retreat exists in the public domain. Ten full Member State Heads were present as Associate Members do not vote. The Treaty is clear: decisions of the Conference require either unanimity or, where abstentions occur, affirmative votes from no fewer than three-quarters of the full membership of fifteen, meaning twelve. Ten votes cannot reach twelve regardless of how they are cast. The required majority the Chairman claimed in his statement of March 25 was, on the face of the Treaty, not available to be assembled.

For the avoidance of doubt, Article 27 of the Treaty, which provides for a simple majority, applies to quorum and to procedural matters only. Article 28 governs substantive decisions of the Conference and sets the three-quarters standard. The reappointment of a Secretary-General is not a procedural matter. The two provisions are not interchangeable.

When a Member State raises a formal objection within the time frame the Rules prescribe, the proper response is to treat the decision as unconfirmed and place it before the Conference as a properly constituted item. The serious procedural failures identified with the reappointment exist independently of which Member State raised them. Any Member State, present or absent, would have had equal standing to object. The fact that it was Trinidad and Tobago is incidental. The rules either apply to everyone or they apply to no one.

The CARICOM meeting agenda is not merely administrative. It is political. It is what triggers the bilateral conversations and informal alignments that happen before Heads enter the room. By ensuring this decision carried no specific flag on any agenda, that entire process was foreclosed. From all indications, the process was engineered to bypass the deliberation the Treaty demands, one that requires advance notice, adequate time, and the full participation of every Member State. Member States were manoeuvred into acquiescence.

Regional institutions live or die by the integrity of those entrusted with their conduct. If any official responsible for the procedural guidance of this meeting failed in that duty, the Community’s citizens have every right to expect that failure to carry consequences.

What this episode ultimately reveals about the quality of institutional advice available to our leaders at these summits, and about the readiness of those leaders to insist on the rules that protect every Member State equally, is a question CARICOM citizens are now entitled to ask, and to demand answers to.

Audley Robinson