Trinidad and To­ba­go says its ob­jec­tion to the reap­point­ment of Dr Car­la Bar­nett as Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al is “nei­ther per­son­al nor po­lit­i­cal”.

In a 22-page let­ter to re­gion­al lead­ers, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Port-of-Spain’s po­si­tion “is not di­rect­ed to­wards any in­di­vid­ual” but rather con­cerns “the le­gal­i­ty of the process adopt­ed, the in­tegri­ty of our in­sti­tu­tions and the faith­ful ob­ser­vance of the con­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work es­tab­lished by the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas”.

She said her ad­min­is­tra­tion “does not ac­cept the process by which the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al was pur­port­ed­ly reap­point­ed and, con­se­quent­ly, is un­able to recog­nise the va­lid­i­ty of the pur­port­ed sec­ond term of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al”.