Region to vote on nominees for Commonwealth Secretary-General’s position 

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - THE infighting within CARICOM over who should be the region’s candidate for the post of Commonwealth Secretary-General will soon come to an end as the regional leaders are set to vote on two nominees.
 
Incumbent Baroness Patricia Scotland and Senator the Honourable Kamina Johnson-Smith, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Jamaica, are the region’s two nominees, and neither one is backing down to allow the other to go forward for the international vote.
 
Scotland has the backing of several of the region’s leaders for the post, but Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness is not backing down from his representative and he will likely get the support of several other regional leaders on the candidacy of Johnson-Smith.
 
“We’re going to make the Commonwealth institution into one that will serve its members well, serve the development, the economic progress, civil and social progress and the technological progress of its members well,” Holness was quoted as saying last week by the Jamaica Information Service.
 
Holness believes that by offering up his representative, the Commonwealth body would be better transformed to assist the people, and it is against that backdrop that he said: “So, we offer our Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Commonwealth.”
 
In the case of the Dominican-born Scotland, she likely commands the support of majority of the regional leaders, as they reportedly agreed to give her their blessing at the end of the Inter-Sessional Meeting held earlier this year.
 
But that was followed by the shock announcement from Holness that he was recommending Johnson-Smith to be the region’s nominee.
 
In a media statement issued last evening (May 17), CARICOM said Member States of the Community would vote for the candidate of their choice. 
 
“The Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community maintains that it is still the turn of the Caribbean to provide a candidate for the position.
 
“In that regard, two candidates from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have been nominated for the post, the incumbent Baroness Patricia Scotland and Senator the Honourable Kamina Johnson-Smith, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Jamaica,” the statement read.

Elections for the post of Secretary-General of the Commonwealth will take place during the CHOG Meeting slated for June 20-25, 2022 in Kigali, Rwanda.