The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Fred Mitchell is a thin-skinned self-publicist whose playbook includes pillorying his opponents and ridiculous attention-grabbing stunts, but he retreats to his pious corner to sulk and whine whenever his dirty laundry is hung out to dry.

Recently the ubiquitous former foreign minister let the secretary general of the PLP run interference for him in an attempt to whitewash the record of his complicity in a scheme four years ago to undermine the will of Caricom.

While pleased to watch the dumpster fire that the incumbent foreign minister has set over his mishandling of Caricom’s response to the deteriorating situation in Venezuela, Mitchell (sorry, the secretary general of the PLP) took umbrage at a reference by this writer to Mitchell’s role in disrupting Caricom to support a British woman whose position of privilege at the top of London’s high society obviously impressed him.

When it acts in unison, Caricom punches far above its weight in international affairs. For example, Caricom represents 27 percent of the voting membership of the Commonwealth and 40 percent of Organization of American States. That is nothing to snivel at and the world has taken notice.

In 2015 Mitchell used the old military strategy of divide and conquer to thwart Caricom. It worked because Perry Christie was asleep at the switch.

Christie gave his word to his Caricom colleagues that the Bahamas would support the Antigua and Barbuda candidate for the post of Secretary General of the Commonwealth. The position had become vacant when the Indian incumbent retired, and it was, in effect, the Caribbean’s turn to lead the organization of 53 nations representing 2.4 billion people.

Back then a now 63-year-old British woman who was born in Dominica but left there when she was a two-year-old baby, was scrounging around looking for a big job and thought the Commonwealth would restart her career in England. No British citizen had ever headed the organization in its 70-year history.

The Baroness Patricia Scotland of Asthal sits in the House of Lords, a privilege enjoyed by only about 800 other British citizens at the moment. She keeps that gig for the rest of her natural life.

She is a member of the Labour party, was a former Attorney General of Britain and is a Queen’s Counsel. It’s a safe bet that it wasn’t her Dominica passport that got her entry to Britain’s most exclusive political clubs.

The Baroness may hold a Dominican passport (and God only knows for what reason she would travel on that), so while technically Dominican, she remains for all intents and purposes a British woman.

Mitchell was still splitting this hair recently when he tried to defend his indefensible position of 2015.

Leave aside the damage it did to Caricom for a minute and concentrate instead on what the disastrous decision to put her in the Commonwealth says about Mitchell’s dippy judg `q1aSment.

This man who wants to be prime minister vouched for her in Parliament. Big mistake. The Baroness has managed to offend just about all of official Britain and gets a cut-eye from all quarters of the Commonwealth. At home she is known as Baroness Shameless.

She entered the Secretariat like a bull in a china shop leaving seasoned Commonwealth diplomats scurrying for the exits with at least two of them taking her to court – and winning. In one instance she was publicly rebuked for not showing up to give evidence to the tribunal investigating her alleged abuses.

With the Commonwealth broke and operating at the mercy of member states, the Baroness spent almost $500,000 renovating the posh apartment in London that she uses as a perk of the job. Reports are renovations included a $400 toilet seat.

Life got better for her friends too. She gave generous contracts to fellow House of Lords members and finagled a private audience with the Queen for one of her best friends, while keeping Commonwealth High Commissioners to London in a holding pen when the Queen visited the Secretariat instead of allowing them to mingle with the titular head of their organization.

She fired her deputy, a respected Kenyan diplomat who took the case to the employment tribunal and won almost half a million dollars in damages.

Last year an Indian diplomat she let go took her to the same tribunal and won. Both employees accused her of being spiteful and vindictive.

Mitchell must hang his head in shame on another front. His Baroness has no signature initiative that will be her lasting legacy other than bedlam and acrimony.

Baroness Scotland tiptoes around the Commonwealth these days careful to avoid stepping in the debris that has become Mitchell’s character judgment and political acumen. Both are shameless.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau,

February 11, 2019.