WHATEVER IS PATRICIA SCOTLAND TO DO

Fred Mitchell MP and Minister of Foreign Affairs with Baroness Patricia Scotland, the Secretary General of the Commonwealth in London at the official residence 28 October 2021.

By Julian Strachan

The British it appears have decided that Baroness Scotland a Dominican and Antiguan citizen who is also a British peer cannot succeed in a second term as the Secretary General of the Commonwealth.  Everyone before her has been a man. Everyone before her has gotten two terms.  This time it’s a woman and this time  the British have decided it cannot be.  No one can quite figure out why but it appears that the Commonwealth is to be Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister’s reprise of empire and Patricia Scotland  who is a Labour peer won’t play ball.  She was more or less told that  she is paying too much attention to the small players in the Commonwealth who do not pay the money.  So if only she would play ball with Canada, Australia, Britain and New Zealand, all will be well. The problem is the Commonwealth is a fiction of a multi-state organization.  It is a hold over from the days of  the British Empire and the British still want to control it. They have left Europe, foolishly so and want to be able to expand their influence around the world and are using the Commonwealth to do so.  Enter the Kenyan President who despite his father’s credentials as a freedom fighter has agreed to make the end run for the British by putting in place a rival female candidate, one of his former Ministers.  There are others who are threatening to enter the race. The Kenyans have received lots of moolah from the British of late. Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, has let the side down by not stepping up to the plate with his liberal credentials. So it is left to the Caribbean to fight for her.  Enter the Iago of the modern era Ron Saunders, the Antiguan / Guyanese diplomat, who is not really a Saunders at all but a knight of realm  all the same and there is a savage campaign in writing and by phone to make Patricia Scotland who defeated him for the job last time, to make her life as miserable as possible.  They have made up stuff about gold toilet seats in her official house. No such thing happened.  The House is in fact falling apart at the seams with furniture that dates back to the 1980s. The repairs they complain of were ordered by her predecessor. Nothing to do with her. But the British press are relentless in their fictions, their racism, their misogyny. For all of those reasons Patricia Scotland should stay.  Besides she has done a good job for small island developing states, on climate change, on the environment, on technology, an impeccable performance and The Bahamas and every Caribbean country should stand strong with Africa and Asia, give her the second term she deserves like all of her  male counterparts before her.