And while Shyne is looking forward to that in the UDP, former UDP Senator and Minister, Dr. Carla Barnett has moved on - and now she's looking out into CARICOM. The Briceno Administration has nominated Dr. Carla Barnett, for the prestigious post of CARICOM Secretary General.
Dr. Barnett is the former Deputy Secretary General, a post which she held from 1997 to 2002. But now she's going for the regional top spot, for a five year term from 2021 to 2026.
It's a posting the regional heads of government will decide on next month, but the campaigning has already begin in a field of two women - Belize's Dr. Carla Barnett and the Current Deputy Secretary General, Suriname's Manorma Soeknandan.
Barnett is Belize's girl and via phone today she told us why she wants to do the job:
Dr. Carla Barnett - Nominated for CARICOM SG "I was very young when I went into CARICOM the first time and at that time that I went, I went as the deputy secretary general, in fact I was the youngest person to ever have been appointed that level in CARICOM and I think it's the right time for me to go and help to do this work at level."
Jules Vasquez "How do you see yourself standing and what role the government of Belize and it's does diplomatic channels play?"
Dr. Carla Barnett "Well, the government of Belize is supporting in the sense of having the conversation with member states both the ministerial and political level and technical level and those conversations started a while ago. Before we floated my candidacy, there were conversations with member states to get a feel for how it would likely go and if it was absolutely negative, we wouldn't have done this. So that's why I say I know that we're off to a positive start."
Barnett says that right now, the reign is, quote, "caught in the cross hairs of two grave crises" of COVID and Climate change. She told us about that:
Dr. Carla Barnett "The crisis that we're facing of COVID and the economy is really an existential crisis. At the individual level as nation states and at the regional level as a group of countries. If I may say it raised the profile of multilateralism, meaning that it will take countries coming together and agreeing on how we're going to approach the crisis and its impact on us in order that we ensure that all of us as individual countries as regions that are fragile that we have a good opportunity to rectify, to fix our economies, sort our health systems and get back to path of growth and development."
And with these big issues before us, Barnett says the region needs a more visible secretary general, and more tangible benefits for citizens of the region:
Dr. Carla Barnett "I would want to see a secretary general who is much more visible and much more on the ground than meeting with the stakeholders at all levels, talking more about what the community means, it's not only about rules of origin and that sort of thing, it's really about all of the various of kind of cooperating, collaboration that comes out of the integration process, whether the work that is recently being done on COVID and collaborating in that or whether it's carifecta which is coming up in another next year sometime if COVID allows it. All of those things I think needs to be done in a different way, the technology now that we talk to one another at the press of a button, I think it presents us with the opportunity for us to leverage that communication in information technology to allow more people to participate within their countries and across the region."
The community council will meet on April 14th to consider the nominees and make recommendation to the heads of government - who will meet in May to make a final decision.
