Kenicia Francis
An environmental activist and Barbuda Council member has added his voice to concerns that sister isle officials were deliberately excluded from last week’s SIDS conference.
Chair of the council’s Agriculture, Lands, and Coastal Protection Committee John Mussington was responding to claims made by Foreign Affairs Minister Chet Greene on Monday’s Observer AM radio show.
Greene alleged that Mussington had approached Senator Knacyntar Nedd-Charles with the intention of presenting Barbuda as a separate entity from Antigua at the United Nations summit.
Greene said this was unacceptable as not only would it portray a divided government, but none of the other twin island nations had two separate entities.
“What we said to Councilman Mussington is that members of the council could always register at Foreign Affairs but to register Barbuda as a separate entity from Antigua is a no-no … you walk to the conference hall, and you saw name tags for Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda,” he explained.
Due to the council not representing Barbuda themselves, they were not able to participate in the decision-making processes during the various discussions at SIDS4.
Instead, they had to be sponsored by civil society groups in order to attend and were only allowed to attend side events.
This prompted Mussington and other Barbudans to stage a protest near the airport during the major event.
Joined by members of the opposition United Progressive Party (UPP), they argued that the Barbuda Council was not invited in an official government capacity, despite having responsibility to govern the island, and could only observe the sessions.
Yesterday Mussington called for Minister Greene to retract his statements saying, “I, John Mussington, have never had any such conversation or presented any such proposal to the Foreign Affairs Minister. I hope the Honourable Member of Parliament would come out publicly and retract that assertion that he made.”
Regarding claims that the council failed to register for the conference, Mussington said the Foreign Affairs Ministry did not inform them about certain deadlines and processes.
He said council members also experienced frustration while trying to register because it involved dealing directly with the United Nations portal.
“You have to provide banking information, you have to provide certain profiles, you have to provide certain information directly to them, which needed to be verified. It’s not an easy process. And there was no support given, there was no early information provided in terms of facilitating the process.
“So, there’s where the ball dropped on the part of the Foreign Affairs Minister and his ministries. To actually get to that level of having that opportunity to present in that manner, in that forum, takes a lot of preparation and it takes a lot of high-level work. So one can only conclude that not having the Barbuda Council at any events whatsoever featuring Barbuda directly was deliberate,” Mussington said.
He said he and other council members had lobbied to present at the conference, emphasising Barbuda’s vulnerability after being devastated by category five Hurricane Irma in 2017. They noted that officials associated with the Peace, Love and Happiness (PLH) development, which has faced backlash from residents for apparent environment damage, were given the opportunity to present at the conference.
Greene also stated that “on the question of the UPP, Leader of the Opposition Jamale Pringle was called by my Permanent Secretary, Anthony Liverpool, and was asked to send the information for himself plus one member of the UPP to attend the opening ceremony and again, there was no response.
“He could not attend because he did not register, and he was invited to register … this was a UN meeting hosted by Antigua and Barbuda; it was not an Antigua Barbuda meeting—all the standards of UN meetings applied.”
Greene’s comments were rigorously denied by Pringle who told Observer he had “received no invitation to participate” in the conference and neither had he “refused to register”.
“[Greene] further asserted that, up to the day before the conference opened, I was contacted to collect my package for the event.
On Sunday evening, May 26, I was contacted by a protocol officer and advised that I should collect my ‘pass’ to the conference.
“However, on Friday, May 10, in a related discussion with Permanent Secretary Anthony Liverpool, I had inquired whether I would be a delegate to the conference. I was advised, then, that there were four persons in the Antigua and Barbuda delegation and these were the Prime Minister and three technicians,” Pringle said.
“I was not informed that there was any role for me – not even as an observer – nor any expectation of my carrying out duties as the Leader of the Opposition.
Accordingly, I saw no need to collect a pass which simply provided me access to the premises.
“My question to Minister Greene is: If I had received an invitation and refused to register, then how and why and on whose instructions was I processed to receive this pass?
“I and my parliamentary colleagues received an official invitation to the welcome reception hosted by the Governor-General and I received an invitation to the dinner hosted by the Prime Minister and Minister Maria Browne.
“I have never attended any official event or conference to which I was not invited and certainly would not have done so in this instance,” Pringle added.
