Former Senior Director in the CARICOM Secretariat’s Office of Trade Negotiations (OTN) Carl Greenidge says the recent decision against renewing his contract came as a surprise.
Responding by email to questions posed by Stabroek News, Greenidge said that his contract came to an end on December 21. He also said that he had no indication of CARICOM’s eventual decision until outgoing Secretary-General Edwin Carrington addressed the issue at a news conference. “Until I heard the Secretary General at the press conference, I had no idea that the contract would not be renewed,” he said.
According to him, CARICOM had offered and arranged to extend the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation (CFTC) beyond November when that expired. Greenidge also served as the CARICOM spokesperson for Agriculture in the College of Negotiators.
The decision against renewing Greenidge’s contract followed on the heels of a complaint by the Guyana government over statements he made while delivering a tribute at the funeral service of Winston Murray. The official complaint by the administration was made based on a report carried by online news site Demerara Waves.
When questioned about Greenidge’s future at CARICOM at his December 17 end-of-year press briefing, Carrington said that Greenidge was still a member of the OTN but it was unclear whether his contract would be renewed. “As of now Mr. Greenidge is a member of the OTN and as far as I know he has a contract which takes him up to the end of this year and that is very soon,” Carrington said.
According to him, “What happens beyond that depends on if there are resources, if we are able to do anything further.” He added, “There are a number of people whose contracts are ending at the end of December, his is one. I don’t know that there is any sanctionable action that one will necessarily be taking on a contract which ends in another week, ten days.”
The official complaint by the government was made by Labour Minister Manzoor Nadir in his capacity as the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nadir, in a letter, said Greenidge’s comments “cast aspersions on and brought disrepute to H.E. Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, President of the Republic of Guyana and his Government” and that “his remarks are highly unprofessional and clearly put him in a conflict of interest position.” He added: “I therefore wish to place on record the Government of Guyana’s loss of confidence in Mr. Greenidge’s ability to represent it and urge that he not be involved in any negotiations that would impact on Guyana or in any negotiations on behalf of Guyana.”
Greenidge, who was Finance Minister under the PNC government, served as an interim Secretary General of the ACP Group in Brussels and Director of the joint ACP-EU specialist institution on information communication technology, at the CTA in Wageningen, The Netherlands.
As Minister of Finance, he led the Guyana delegations that negotiated agreements such as Paris Club and the first programme for the clearance of arrears to the Multilateral Institutions under the so-called ‘Intensified Collaborative Approach’ for chronically indebted countries and buy-back of commercial debt, on which successful management of Guyana’s Economic Recovery Programme and HIPC eligibility were based.
Meanwhile, Greenidge is among the nominees to be the main opposition PNCR’s presidential candidate for the 2011 general elections. He was nominated by the group which supported Murray’s bid to be the candidate.
Questioned about his nomination, Greenidge said he had not been nominated as a presidential candidate since the process was still ongoing.
He, however, did not respond when questioned directly if he was interested in being the PNCR presidential candidate.
However, one of Greenidge’s backers, Ronald Austin, had told this newspaper previously that he has reacted positively to his name being put forward.
Austin had said that Greenidge would have to work out the consequences for his professional life. “We expect him to go ahead and I think he is eminently qualified,” he added, while describing Greenidge as a person of “rock-like integrity.”
