Baroness bacchanal

Baroness bacchanal
Published on Jun 8, 2016, 9:27 am AST
By Kim Boodram


Process being questioned: Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Baroness Patricia Scotland.


SECRETARY General of the Commonwealth, Baroness Patricia Scotland, has been accused of securing the top political gig in the Commonwealth through an “utterly corrupt process” that allegedly included awarding false knighthoods and promises of cash for votes.

Scotland secured the position last December over popular choice Sir Ronald Sanders of Antigua and Barbuda.

A mild controversy had been stirred up when the Office of the Prime Minister in Trinidad and Tobago announced last October that it would throw support behind Sanders and withdraw the local candidate, former government minister Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie, who yesterday declined comment on the allegations against the Baroness.

According to a lengthy article published last Sunday by the UK’s Mail Online, Baroness Scotland, a former Labour Cabinet Minister, stands accused of trying to win support from Commonwealth prime ministers and presidents with offers of honours and charitable donations, through an obscure Catholic order of which she was a prominent member and whose leader in Britain is her “dear friend” Anthony Bailey.

The Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George made “an astonishing 21 visits to the Caribbean in the months before she took office as Secretary-General of the Commonwealth”, the Mail stated.

In the wake of those visits, top politicians in at least five island nations, which all had a vote in her election, were given knighthoods or medals from the Order.

“Those honoured included the Prime Minister and President of Dominica, who later officially nominated Baroness Scotland as their country’s candidate, despite the fact she has not lived there since she was two,” the Mail on Sunday stated.

At the weekend, Conservative MP James Cleverly led a call for a full investigation into the allegations against Baroness Scotland whose £160,000-a-year political post is second only to the Queen in the Commonwealth hierarchy, the Mail stated.

“The Commonwealth is a vitally important and respected institution and we can’t allow it to be dragged into any kind of scandal. There must be the fullest possible inquiry,” Cleverly was quoted as saying.

The leader of the Opposition in Dominica, Lennox Linton, described Baroness Scotland as “opportunistic, deceitful and disgraceful”, the Mail claimed.

Linton was said to have detailed his concerns in a letter to the Queen and is said to have commented to the Mail on Sunday : “There is no doubt in my mind that [Baroness] Scotland, Bailey and the Order used the influence of knighthoods to government leaders and heads of state – along with charitable contributions – as part of Scotland’s campaign to become Secretary-General.”

The whole process, Linton alleged, was “utterly corrupt”.

The Mail had last week exposed Bailey for having obtained an Antiguan knighthood in return for dispensing the Constaninian Order’s own honours – which are not recognised by the Vatican - and the publication also claimed that : Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit was knighted by the Order and given promises of investment six months before he endorsed Baroness Scotland, that Skerrit later renamed a Dominican primary school after the Baroness and that she caused outrage at the time by saying those who criticised the unpopular Dominican PM should “suck salt”, which the Mail referred to as “a deeply offensive Caribbean curse”.

The Baroness was also appointed as an ‘international relief co-ordinator’ by Skerrit last year before taking her sister to the island on a ‘scoping mission’ financially supported by the British Government, the Mail claimed.

In the meantime, charitable projects in Antigua announced by Bailey and Baroness Scotland 18 months ago on behalf of the Order are still awaiting nearly half of the promised £1.1 million, the Mail stated.

In the run-up to the Commonwealth election, Baroness Scotland had become increasingly keen to establish her links to her birthplace in Dominica, the Mail noted, despite having spent most of her childhood and adult life in Britain, where she became a QC and politician, rising to Attorney-General in Gordon Brown’s Government.

By September 2014 she had represented Dominica at a meeting of Caricom (Caribbean Community) foreign ministers.

The Mail also noted that the Baroness had not been the popular choice, as most Caribbean countries favoured the ‘consensus’ candidate, Sanders the diplomat.

Antigua’s Prime Minister, Gaston Browne, told the Mail, “We take the position that she (Baroness Scotland) was not a Caribbean candidate because her dominant nationality is British.”


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