PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Former CARICOM and foreign affairs minister, Dr. Amery Browne is questioning the non-representation at the highest political level of Trinidad and Tobago at the just concluded Africa and Caribbean Community summit held in Ethiopia last weekend.
Browne said that it was “most absurd” statement by his successor, Sean Sobers, that the country was represented by the summit by an acting permanent secretary and a divisional director in the ministry
“In reality a Summit must be attended by the Head of Government or highest level of alternative eg. the Minister of Foreign Affairs. With no rationale or explanation they made the cavalier decision to send an acting perm sec and a divisional director from within the Ministry to represent our nation at this Summit in Ethiopia,” Browne wrote on his Facebook page.
He said that the non-appearance of the Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar or Sobers “is a further insult to CARICOM and to the African Union as well”
Since coming into office in April this year, Prime Minister Persad Bissessar has also missed the annual CARICOM summit that was held in Jamaica this year in July..
“Discussions are being held at the political and Head of Government level that would shape the very future of this important linkage across the Atlantic, and sending public servants at a lower level ensures that you have little to no voice in the process.”
Browne said that to make matters worse, Sobers then drew a “mind-boggling comparison” with the representation of Guyana and Jamaica at the summit, “when everyone knows that neither of those nations had sworn-in their new Cabinets when the Summit was being convened”.
Among he CARICOM leaders who attended the summit were the incoming CARICOM chairman, Prime Minister Dr. Terrance Drew of St. Kitts and Nevis, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Grenada’s Dickon Mitchell, Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda, Philip Davis of The Bahamas), and the region’s longest serving head of government, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines.
