Some weeks ago, the issue of Baroness Patricia Scotland’s Caribbean credibility came up again.

Orin Gordon, a man with considerable media experience in Guyana and the wider Caribbean, argued that greater emphasis needed to be placed on Baroness Scotland’s achievements as secretary general of the Commonwealth as opposed to her Caribbean credibility.

Gordon was responding to Prime Minister Keith Rowley’s position that Trinidad and Tobago would retain its 2015 position that Baroness Scotland was not a true Caribbean candidate and therefore would not receive the support of his Government. She was effectively seen, then and now, as a British candidate flying a Dominican flag.

Orin Gordon asserted that, “Nationhood and belonging are fluid, deep, and complex, and are exacerbated by our vast diasporas.” He went on to mention the fact that Jamaicans have often celebrated athletes who have long migrated, such as Linford Christie and Donovan Bailey.

While Johnson Smith did not use her Caribbean credibility to justify her campaign to unseat Baroness Scotland, and rightly so, Gordon found it ironical that her candidacy could be justified based on her Caribbean credibility when no less a person than Edward Seaga, a stalwart of Johnson Smith’s party, was born in the US city of Boston and became a prime minister of Jamaica. To mention Edward Seaga was a chink in Gordon’s argument.

What Gordon did by bringing up Edward Seaga was to offer support for Rowley’s argument. Edward Seaga was as Jamaican as Baroness Scotland is British. I will agree that I do not know how connected Baroness Scotland remained to the Caribbean after leaving at age two, but to her credit, she was admitted to the Dominican Bar.

What is clear, however, is that Baroness Scotland immersed herself greatly into British society. A black person, and more so a black woman, does not move up in British society without being greatly immersed into the culture of the place, getting an excellent education, joining the “right” social networks, and of course, working harder than her peers – pun intended. We must respect her for that.

Edward Seaga left Boston at about three months of age. I doubt any hint of Boston remained in his veins. Seaga’s Caribbean credibility is not simply based on years spent in Jamaica or even his leadership of the country. For me, his is deeply rooted in his significant contributions to Jamaican and, by extension, Caribbean culture.

As an anthropologist, Seaga had a deep appreciation for Afro-Jamaican culture and was a noted supporter of revivalism and recorded Kumina music. In my view, to be immersed into the religious practises of Revivalism is to appreciate Afro-Jamaican culture on an extremely high level, a level many with darker hues than Seaga shy away from.

But Seaga’s Caribbean credibility doesn’t end there. He was the owner of what has been described as the top recording music company in the Caribbean at the time, West Indian Records Ltd (WIRL). Seaga left the music-producing business to enter politics, and WIRL was sold to a Guyanese who, in turn, sold it to Byron Lee who renamed it Dynamic Sounds.

The question of where a candidate for Commonwealth secretary general comes from and which region or country he or she represents could very well be fluid going forward.

It seems that Johnson Smith would have lost her bid for the top job since most of the African states were convinced that in two years Africa will have a chance to field a candidate as opposed to the strong likelihood of Johnson Smith governing for four or eight years.

The question is: Was Johnson Smith a Caribbean candidate? Is the process of rotating the leadership under greater threat now than it has ever been? Going forward, will countries, as opposed to regions, field candidates as they see fit? Zimbabwe, while on suspension from the Commonwealth, did convince Sri Lanka to put up Lakshman Kadirgamar, but he lost (40-11) to the incumbent Don McKinnon.

Suppose there is an excellent candidate for the job, a strong advocate for the sustainable development of the Commonwealth and the global south, should that person miss out on the chance to lead simply because it is not the turn of that person’s region of birth or residence? Looked at another way, even if the rather informal system of taking turns remains, will we get to the stage at which it becomes the norm for a region to put up a candidate regardless of the region from which the candidate originates or resides?

Listening to the narrative here in Jamaica over the last few months, I got the impression that Johnson Smith’s Caribbean citizenship was of secondary importance. In fact, at one point the discussion centred on whether Johnson Smith was a Jamaica Labour Party candidate or a Jamaican candidate. One commentator made clear, with gusto in his voice, that Johnson Smith was a Jamaican candidate and should be supported by all of Jamaica in the same way all of Jamaica supported and celebrated Senator Floyd Morris on his election to the UN Committee on Disabilities.

Beyond the domestic political back and forth, what is perhaps more important is the very real possibility that Johnson Smith’s candidacy was not premised on the idea that it remains the Caribbean’s turn to field a candidate, indeed, a second term is no guarantee for a candidate and, by extension, a region, but previous secretaries general have been returned for second terms even when challenged.

Notwithstanding concerns about Caricom unity, Johnson Smith’s run, inclusive of its “razor thin” result (27-24), has disrupted the Commonwealth status quo. That is not a bad thing.

Dr Samuel Braithwaite is a lecturer in Department of Economics at The University of the West Indies, Mona. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or braithwaitesamuel@gmail.com.