BRIDGETOWN — Three days into the CARICOM tariff harmonization meeting in Kingston, Barbados has issued no public statement. Prime Minister Mottley, who chaired the November summit at which the framework was first proposed, has not spoken publicly since Friday. The PM’s office cited “private engagements” through the weekend.
The Barbadian delegation in Kingston is being led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade. Sources at the Hilton confirm she has spoken in two of the three plenaries but has not tabled an amendment in either direction. Her interventions, according to one delegation note shared with Bajan Bugle on background, have been “procedural.”
This is unusual. Mottley was the framework’s most prominent public defender at the November summit. Her speech that week — calling out “the polite paralysis of consensus politics” — was widely shared and is still pinned to the Office of the Prime Minister’s social channels.
Six months later, Barbados is silent.
Three theories are circulating in Bridgetown.
The first: Mottley does not want to be on the losing side of a Trinidad veto and is letting smaller states absorb that loss. The second: Bridgetown is negotiating a bilateral side-deal with Trinidad and cannot openly oppose Port of Spain in Kingston without burning that channel. The third: Mottley is running out the clock on her CARICOM chair tenure and would rather hand the file to whoever takes over in July.
None of the three has been confirmed. The Office of the Prime Minister did not respond to a Sunday or Monday request for comment.
Dr. Avinash Persaud, formerly an advisor to the PM on financial architecture, told Barbados Today over the weekend that “small states cannot afford the luxury of strategic silence.” His remarks were not directed at the current government, he said.
Trinidad continues to push for forty-eight months. Six states continue to push for twenty-four. Barbados continues to push for procedural points of order.
The framework was supposed to be ready for July. It is now April.
The chair is silent.