Kigali Rwanda – The Commonwealth heads of government meeting has reached a consensus to re-elect Baroness Patricia Scotland as secretary general of the commonwealth.
The revelation was made by the commonwealth secretariat team in Kigali.
Scotland was facing stiff competition from Jamaica’s foreign minister Kamina J Smith.
Scotland will now serve in the position until the next rotation where a secretary general shall come from Africa.
WHO IS PATRICIA SCOTLAND
Patricia Janet Scotland, Baroness Scotland of Asthal is a British diplomat, barrister and politician born on 19 August 1955
She serves as the sixth secretary-general of the Commonwealth of Nations. She was elected at the 2015 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and took office on 1 April 2016. She is the first woman to hold the post.[1] She was elevated to the House of Lords in 1997 and, as a British Labour Party politician, served in ministerial positions within the UK Government, most notably as the Attorney General for England and Wales and Advocate General for Northern Ireland. She is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Dominica, where she was born.
At the 2015 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Scotland was nominated for the position of Commonwealth Secretary-General by her native country of Dominica and defeated Antiguan diplomat Ronald Sanders, who was thought to have been the frontrunner for the position,[21] and former deputy secretary-general for political affairs Mmasekgoa Masire-Mwamba of Botswana to become the 6th Commonwealth Secretary-General and the first woman to hold the post. She began her first of a maximum of two possible four-year terms on 1 April 2016.
Her candidacy was opposed by Hugh Segal, former Canadian special envoy to the Commonwealth and senator, who wrote in an editorial that she was not qualified for the position because she “accepted a well-paying brief from a junta in the Maldives to argue against the Commonwealth’s legitimacy when it and Canada sought the restoration of democracy in that country.
Her bid to have her four-year term automatically renewed was rejected in June 2020, in contrast to the usual convention where an incumbent seeking a second term in office is elected unopposed for his or her second term. This followed a “significant and diverse number of colleagues from across the Commonwealth” raising objection to the proposal, due to allegations of cronyism following an audit of the Commonwealth Secretariat’s procurement practices. Her term has been extended, however, due to the postponement of the 2020 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
