Baroness Scotland’s reappointment as Commonwealth chief has been blocked after ‘significant’ opposition from member states, it emerged today.
A leaked letter from Boris Johnson to other leaders said a call for the peer to be granted a second term as secretary general amid the coronavirus crisis had been turned down.
The PM said ‘a significant and diverse number of colleagues from across the Commonwealth have communicated that they do not support that proposal’.
Instead Lady Scotland will remain in post until a full Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting can be held to decide on her future. One had been slated for Rwanda in April, but has been delayed indefinitely.
In February, it was revealed that Britain had suspended a chunk of its funding to the Commonwealth Secretariat amid a row over financial controls.
The government said at the time that handing over the money – around £4.7million a year – had been made ‘conditional’ on the body’s processes meeting high standards.
The move came after Lady Scotland was criticised by auditors for ‘circumventing’ usual rules in awarding a £250,000 consultancy to a firm run by a friend. She has denied any wrongdoing.
New Zealand and Australia had taken similar action.
The letter from Mr Johnson to other leaders, seen by Caribbean News Global, said Barbados had proposed that Lady Scotland be immediately reappointed for a second four-year term, but it had been rejected. The former Attorney General was handed the job in 2016.
Member states ‘prefer that the decision on the next substantive Secretary-General appointment should be taken at CHOGM, according to our established practice’, Mr Johnson wrote.
The premier, currently chair of the Commonwealth group, said instead he wanted to ‘offer Baroness Scotland an extension of her current term until we meet in (Rwandan capital) Kigali for our postponed CHOGM’.
A Commonwealth spokesman said today: ‘The reappointment process for Commonwealth Secretary General’s occurs when leaders gather for the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).
‘The Secretary-General, Baroness Scotland came into post on 1 Apr 2016 for a term of four years.
‘The usual convention is that an incumbent seeking a second term in office is elected unopposed for his or her second term. The Secretary-General, Baroness Scotland has been supported to serve a second term by Dominica, her country of birth.
‘Commonwealth member states agreed to extend the current Secretary-General’s contract in order to consider the reappointment at CHOGM in Rwanda in June 2020. However, CHOGM has been postponed of due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
‘A member state wrote to the Chair in Office to request that Heads of Government consider reappointment now due to the uncertainty of when CHOGM will be able to take place due to the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic.
‘The Chair in Office wrote to member states on 8 June 2020 to state that consensus was not reached for reappointment to occur now in the absence of CHOGM.
‘Therefore the Chair in Office has proposed that, as is customary, the reappointment process will now take place when CHOGM is able to meet.’
