– questions on successor to Carrington; and ‘governance’ committee of ambassadors
– in Bridgetown
AS arrangements proceed for the first Inter-Sessional Meeting of Caribbean Community leaders in the final week of this month in Grenada, host Prime Minister Tillman Thomas, is to receive his first official briefing on Friday (Feb. 4) from acting Secretary-General Lolita Applewhaite. The Barbados-born CARICOM Deputy Secretary-General has been acting as Secretary-General following the retirement, as of December 31, 2010, of Tobago-born, Edwin Carrington, after 18 years of faithful service to the region’s economic integration movement.
Applewhaite was in Barbados last week for a briefing with Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, who now shoulders lead responsibility that his predecessor, the late David Thompson, carried on readiness-arrangements for the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).
But two of the more urgent issues for the coming briefing with Prime Minister Thomas, who assumed the Community’s six-month rotating chairmanship from Prime Minister Bruce Golding from the start of 2011, pertain to finding a successor to Carrington and the functioning of a new governance mechanism that involves a permanent committee of CARICOM ambassadors.
The briefings ahead of this month’s Inter-Sessional Meeting, have come against the backdrop of rising concerns about the puzzling secrecy that surrounds the ‘search’ for a suitable successor to Carrington who had served the Community in that capacity for 18 years before demitting office.
Informed observers have noted that it is the norm for regional, hemispheric and international organizations, such as the United Nations, Organization of American States, Commonwealth Secretariat and Pan-American Health Organization, to indicate efforts to fill vacancies in their top posts and even provide names of nominees, as endorsed by their respective governments.
This is NOT now the case in CARICOM where there is a ten-member ‘search committee’; under the chairmanship of Barbados’ Foreign Minister Senator Maxine McLean.
The committee was mandated by Community Heads of Government last August to help in shortlisting potential suitable candidates for the post of Secretary-General. It was established shortly after Carrington had officially announced, on August 4, 2010, his decision to retire at yearend.

INFORMATION LACKING
His surprised announcement followed a special caucus of Heads of Government at last July’s CARICOM Summit in Montego Bay. But host Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, was to deny that Carrington may have been “provoked” into making that decision as a consequence of the nature of the deliberations at the Montego Bay caucus.
Neither information on specific terms of reference to guide the work of the search committee nor qualification criteria required of potential candidates were forthcoming.
Beyond that is a bland press announcement which followed a meeting that was scheduled to deal with the broader and very pressing, but elusive issue of improved governance of an almost 34-year-old CARICOM.
The approach by the Community’s leaders to create an effective governance architecture that’s responsive to today’s challenges is itself proving to be politically humorous in some quarters, including regional institutions and diplomats.
The humour centres on the leaders’ advocacy of a permanent committee of CARICOM ambassadors located in their respective national jurisdictions and engaged via teleconferencing, to help the process of “effective governance.”
Yet to be defined is this un-empowered committee’s standing in relationship with, for example, the Council of Ministers and Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED).
NONE AMONG FIVE
So far as the work of the “search committee” for a new Secretary-General is concerned, its efforts came to a disappointing position by yearend with a conclusion that NONE of the five candidates shortlisted for recommendation met the required appointment criteria being sought and details of which are unknown to the public at large.

Senator McLean’s committee did not consider, as suitable nominees, the five who had presented themselves and in place of whose names I will state their respective countries – Belize; Dominica; St. Lucia; Suriname and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

There has also emerged a report that a member of the ‘search committee’, whose name was obtained, has signalled to his colleagues an interest in resigning in order to make himself available, if invited, for an interview for the SG’s post.

The recurring question, therefore, in the face of continuing secrecy over the search committee’s work, is: what’s really going on?

The current scenario is a mix of an amusing attempt at “improved governance”—via a scattered committee of un-empowered regional ambassadors – to a ‘search committee’ struggling to come up with even two potentially suitable candidates to choose from as Secretary-General.
A report from the search committee is expected to be officially submitted for consideration at the forthcoming Inter-Sessional Meeting in St. George’s.
Host Prime Minister, Tillman Thomas, who had neither the benefit of an official conversation with either Carrington on demitting office at yearend, or with Jamaica’s Prime Minister Golding, who concluded his six-month stint as  CARICOM chairman, also on December 31, is due to receive this Friday (February 4) his first briefing by acting Secretary-General Lolita Applewhaite.
Some regional officials and diplomats feel it would be interesting to learn whether, in the “search” process for a new Secretary-General, the committee found time to benefit from the suggestions/advice from, among others, notable CARICOM personalities like:
Sir Shridath Ramphal, former chairman of The West Indian Commission; Sir  George Alleyne, Chancellor of the University of the West Indies and former head of the Pan American Health Organization; or any of the key representatives of the region’s business sector, labour and cultural organizations?
Or, for that matter, whether any CARICOM leader has considered it useful to engage in such a consultation process to help inform his/her own thinking for the decisions yet to be made on both the functioning of a committee of ambassadors on “governance” and finding a new Secretary-General.