The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

It doesn’t take much to place a wasp nest in a figurative diplomatic bag and get Foreign Minister Fred “Supersonic” Mitchell hot under the collar.

The Minister took to the floor of the House of Assembly, boldly to play the role of Prime Minister by reporting to the House the goings-on just concluded at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta and the still goings-on at the UN Climate Conference in Paris. Perry Christie attended both as head of delegation.

From there, the Minister’s intervention just got curiouser and curiouser. For starters, why was he usurping the Prime Minister? As it was suitably styled the Heads of Government Meeting in Malta attended by our very own head of government, why didn’t Perry Christie brief the House on what went on?

But the would-be Prime Minister, Fred, has been known to supplant Perry from time to time. The de facto Prime Minister didn’t say peep.

Would-be Prime Minister Mitchell reported on how Baroness Patricia Scotland became the first British citizen to head the Commonwealth Secretariat in its 66-year history. That is where Freddie seems to have put his foot wrong.

Her eminence (his word) convinced Mr Mitchell back in 2013 that she was the chosen one to lead the Commonwealth. This coincided with a low period in the Baroness’ life when she was found guilty of breaking the law in England by hiring an illegal alien as a housekeeper. Bear in mind she was Attorney General at the time. She got a slap on the wrist fine of about $7,500. The maid was found guilty and sent packing back to Tonga.

With her Labour Party out of office, she was clearly looking for a new perch and the cheeky chap from the islands might help her salvage her reputation.

It was well known then that Sir Ronald Sanders, the Antigua and Barbuda candidate would likely throw his hat into the ring. And it was long before the Trinidad and Tobago candidate announced he was also in the race. So Fred backed the Baroness even before he confirmed who else would be running. Curious.

But that’s not what tipped the kettle over. Fred says that he had to make it clear to a former Attorney General of the United Kingdom that it was not his decision who The Bahamas would vote for. One would have thought the Baroness was fully acquainted with cabinet protocol and might have thought it strange that Fred would pledge his support BEFORE he consulted his boss – the cabinet. She no doubt must have chalked it up to the different way they do things down in the former colonies.

Fred was being disingenuous in his statement that the government’s final position was to seek a consensus candidate. What he meant was he got Perry to seek consensus around Fred’s candidate, the Baroness.

The Foreign Minister would have us believe that the Commonwealth was badly served while in the hands of the distinguished Indian diplomat Kamalesh Sharma, in office as Secretary General since 2008.

In Fred’s mind, the big boys of the Commonwealth – Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand – were supposedly put off by the way the third world chaps were running things on their dime, so they disengaged leaving the Commonwealth to rot on the vine.

Were this true, Her Majesty would not have been amused. It probably also came as a bit of a shock to the Conservative Prime Minister of Britain David Cameron who didn’t even campaign for the Labour Peer, Baroness Scotland. His attitude to the Commonwealth: play amongst yourselves, leave Britain out of it.

Fred ought to know that his statement was a canard. The hawkish former Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper, allied with the Prime Minister of India (who will never let anyone forget that it was Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers who assassinated Rajiv Gandhi) were so adamant that the 2013 CHOGM should not be held in Sri Lanka that they didn’t go.

The big concern was about human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. But we have learned from the disclosures she is required to make as a British politician that the Baroness keeps company with some curious people. She was paid more than $100,000 for two weeks work as advisor to the leader of a coup d’etat in fellow Commonwealth country Maldives. None other than the Tamil Tigers assisted the coup leader. The Baroness supposedly gave him legal advice on how to avoid punitive action by (drum roll, please) the Commonwealth.

She had a slick and well-financed campaign and she disclosed that a Bangladeshi who was close friends with former US Vice President Dick Cheney was a primary source of her campaign funds. Cheney was the Darth Vader of US politics who helped talk the US into war in Iraq, a war the Baroness supported and all of the Caribbean opposed. She became the Bangladeshi’s personal advisor in March.

Fred led the House to believe that only because a member of the British House of Lords was now Secretary General, Justin Trudeau, the new Prime Minister of Canada said Canada would re-engage with the Commonwealth. Canada would be re-

engaging with the Commonwealth regardless of who was elected Secretary General because that is how Canada’s cool new Prime Minister rolls.

The Canadian people grew sick and tired of the polarisation of Canada that Stephen Harper advocated and gave Trudeau’s Liberal Party an overwhelming mandate to take Canada in a more caring and engaging direction. Translation: Hello World, Canada is your friend again.

(I shall continue this discussion in tomorrow’s Tribune).

THE GRADUATE

Nassau,

December 13, 2015.