St. Kitts-Nevis PM wants OECS consensus on Commonwealth Secretary General nominee

Prime Minister of St. Kitts, Dr. Timothy Harris, has called on Organization of the Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) member states to settle on one candidate for the post of Commonwealth Secretary General.

The 62nd OECS Authority is presently meeting in Dominica and delivering remarks at the opening ceremony for the event, Harris questioned whether the OECS can be perceived as working together when they have not settled on one candidate.

He suggested that the two-day meeting be used to reach a consensus in the matter.

“We are facing Malta very soon and as the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Dominica has just said, we have not settled on one candidate,” he said. “We believe that this is a matter that we should try to cure and perhaps the gathering this day in Dominica, with two of the countries from the OECS with particular and special interest in the candidature of one or the other, we could perhaps today through conversation achieve the consensus which we will need to move this program forward.”

Commonwealth Heads of government will be meeting in Malta on 27–29 November 2015 and a General Secretary for the organization will be elected.

Presently two candidates from the Caribbean region are being nominated for the post. Antigua and Barbuda has nominated former diplomat, Sir Ronald Sanders and Dominica’s nominee is former UK Attorney General, Dominican-born, Baroness Patricia Scotland.

Several CARICOM countries, some from the OECS, have thrown their support behind Sanders and Harris noted that the OECS should avoid a dangerous precedent by settling on one nominee.

“And to avoid, in my view, a dangerous precedence where any island, any member of CARICOM, could go on their own personal agenda which makes it ever so difficult whenever we need to leverage the collective strength of the region,” he said. “That to me is a matter which the OECS can lead and indeed in the efforts at integration at the border level the OECS has always lead CARICOM and we must continue with that leadership.”

In the past, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has expressed confidence in Dominica’s nominee, saying that her qualifications will serve the Commonwealth well in regional and international affairs.

“We hope that the majority of the Commonwealth nations can look at Baroness Scotland’s qualifications and lend their support to her candidacy so we can advance the very important work at the Commonwealth,” he stated recently.

The Commonwealth Secretary-General is elected to a maximum of two four-year terms and the incumbent, Kamalesh Sharma of India, is due to demit office in April 2016 on the expiration of his second term.

Sharma’s successor is due to be elected at the next Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Malta.

Dominica News Online