(Trinidad Guardian) The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) is expected to announce today that the Barbadian candidate, Daniel Best, will be the new president of the Bridgetown, Barbados-based regional development bank.
Best edged out the T&T candidate, Gregory Hill, following discussions that, sources said, took place between T&T Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Mottley. The two prime ministers were among regional leaders who were in Bridgetown last Saturday for a meeting with a bipartisan US Congressional delegation. Rowley supported the T&T candidate, while Mottley supported her countryman.
The discussions between Prime Ministers Rowley and Mottley on the issue of the selection of the CDB president were suggested by the board of governors of the CDB, as a means of breaking the deadlock between the two candidates following the November 21 polling for the presidency.
That deadlock meant neither candidate could be elected without a tie-breaking mechanism because the CDB’s rules provide that the board of governors elects the institution’s president and that the president “shall be elected by a vote of not less than 66 per cent of the total number of the governors representing not less than 75 per cent of the total voting power of the members.”
The CDB’s two largest shareholders are Trinidad and Tobago with 17.31 per cent and Jamaica with 17.31 per cent. Canada and the United Kingdom hold 9.31 per cent each, while Italy and Germany are 5.58 per cent shareholders.
Hill currently serves as the CDB’s vice president, finance and corporate services, while Best is the senior infrastructure and development advisor to Prime Minster of Barbados, Mia Mottley. That followed over a decade of employment at the CDB, during which he rose to be director of projects.
A third candidate, Bahamian Therese Turner Jones, who is the CDB’s acting vice president of operations, was withdrawn from the election in November.
The election for a new president of the CDB, followed the decision by the institution in January to send its former president, Hyginus ‘Gene’ Lyon, on administrative leave.
Leon, who was the sixth president of the CDB, resigned in April.
The founding president of the CDB was St Lucian Arthur Lewis, who was followed by William Demas from T&T, Neville Nicholls from Barbados, Compton Bourne from Guyana and Warren Smith from Jamaica.
Last month after it was clear that the voting was deadlocked, the CDB said the process of electing a new president was ongoing and that an additional round of voting was expected to start today and end on Friday.
T&T’s decision to withdraw Hill means today’s scheduled voting will not take place.
Efforts to get a comment from the T&T Prime Minister were not immediately successful last night
