The Jamaica Gleaner’s editorial board on Wednesday proposed that Prime Minister Andrew Holness assume the role of interlocutor between CARICOM and Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar in an effort to break what the paper called the region’s political logjam — a public framing of a tension that has been building inside the community for months.
The underlying dispute centres on the Carla Barnett affair and on Persad-Bissessar’s broader posture toward the bloc since returning to office in May 2025. The Gleaner conceded that some of the Trinidadian prime minister’s positioning may be performative but argued there are genuine points of principle requiring engagement rather than papering over. The paper suggested Holness be supported by Montserrat Chief Minister Reuben Meade, citing Holness’s seat on CARICOM’s three-member Bureau alongside St Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Terrance Drew and incoming chairman, St Lucia’s Phillip Pierre.
The stakes go beyond protocol. A region that loses its capacity to coordinate at exactly the moment external pressures intensify — climate financing fights, Venezuela proceedings at the ICJ, shifting US policy on the hemisphere, the US immigrant visa pause now affecting nearly every CARICOM state — is a region that loses leverage. The Gleaner’s intervention is essentially an argument that the cohesion question cannot be deferred again, and that Jamaica is uniquely positioned to handle the diplomatic work because of Holness’s standing on the Bureau and his ideological proximity to several of the contested positions.
Source: Jamaica Gleaner, May 13, 2026.