Who REALLY put Zimbabwe back on the Commonwealth agenda?

The Commonwealth Association and other organisations have been struggling since 2003 to put Zimbabwe back on the official Commonwealth agenda. The attitude has ranged from the hands-off 'it's not a member country anymore' to the back-seat 'we're waiting for a lead from Zimbabwe's neighbours.' The issue was deemed that sensitive. Meanwhile, the people of Zimbabwe suffered rampant inflation (up to a million per cent at one time), unemployment, food shortages, deteriorating health and in their thousands have left for South Africa, Botswana and further afield in search of jobs and sanctuary.

Unfortunately, Commonwealth silence on the matter was interpreted in some quarters, including in Zimbabwe, as indifference. In an attempt to highlight the Zimbabwe people's plight and force the issue on to the table, the Association and the Royal Commonwealth Society joined forces at CHOGM 2007, bringing then Opposition leader (now Prime Minister) Morgan Tsvangirai to Kampala and hosting a series of high profile events. Alas, the CHOGM 2007 communique remained silent.

The Association and a wider group of Commonwealth organisations have been busy since then monitoring political, social and economic progress in Zimbabwe. Many pressed various governments for inclusion of a statement on Zimbabwe at CHOGM 2009, lobbying for months ahead for a signal of Commonwealth care for the people of Zimbabwe and support for an eventual return to the Commonwealth. The Zimbabwe Committee, an ad hoc group of Commonwealth organisations in London, suggested a Special Programme to assist eventual reconstruction and has also met Secretary-General Sharma and written to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The small Association delegation to the Commonwealth People's Forum in Port-of-Spain in November lobbied hard for the inclusion of a paragraph in the Forum's statement of support for Zimbabwe's eventual return to the Commonwealth and was delighted when a form of this appeared in the CHOGM 2009 communique. The communique paragraph reads: 'Heads of Government welcomed the Global Political Agreement on power-sharing in Zimbabwe and expressed the hope that this would be implemented faithfully and effectively. They looked forward to the conditions being created for the return of Zimbabwe to the Commonwealth.'

The UK Government has since tried to claim that it was behind the 'Zimbabwe paragraph' (thus drawing a predictable bellicose response from President Mugabe) but we understand that it was Sharma who urged South African President Zuma to bring up the matter to fellow Heads at the Retreat. At the final Press Conference, Zuma alluded to a SADC report on political progress which had been circulated. Since Zuma took over as President, South Africa has indeed taken a more pro-active role on the Zimbabwe 'question.'

There's still a long road ahead before Zimbabwe returns to the Commonwealth, but it has at last started.

Do you have a view on how the Commonwealth can help Zimbabwe? Leave a comment at the bottom of this posting or email us at info@comassoc.org

Back to Square One at the Secretariat?

Veteran Secretariat watchers may be pleased to know that history DOES repeat itself.

Seventeen years since the departure of the last Assistant Secretaries-General, it looks as if this post will be revived in 2010. Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma had been pressing for the last year or so for a third Deputy position to be restored (whispers have it that he was hoping to tap a then newly-departed Director for the job) but in the end Governments only gave him the nod for an Assistant Secretary-General. Unfortunately they declined to give any extra money to go with it. Funds for this position will have to be taken fom other divisional budgets and the cries of woe are already emanating from Marlborough House.

The ASG post, as it was known in the acronym-strewn jargon of the Secretariat, was created as a means of enabling the Secretary-General to appoint someone to a very senior position in the Secretariat. At the time, the posts of DSGs were filled by persons agreed by consensus by Governments, much as the Secretary-General was (and is) by the Heads themselves. This led to a lot of cross-Commonwealth canvassing through High Commissions and although the Deputies were often able people of very high calibre, there were occasions when the process did not result in the right person filling the post.

The last two ASGs were Manmohan (Moni) Malhoutra of India and William (Bill) Montgomery of Canada who left at end July and end October 1993 respectively. Malhoutra, who had been ASG and Head of Secretary-General Sonny Ramphal's office, headed what was known as the Human Resource Development Group (education, health, management development, women and development, youth and a partial handle on the old Fellowships and Training Programme - and the old Science Council, and legal and information divisions) by the time he left. Montgomery headed up the 'CFTC' divisions: General Technical Assistance, Export Market Development, Industrial Development and the Technical Assistance Group).

Their roles were subsequently compressed into a third DSG post and by the end of that year, the three Deputies were Sir Anthony Siaguru of Papua New Guinea (Political), Sir Humphrey Maud of Britain (Economic and Social Affairs) and Nick Hare of Canada (Development Cooperation. Some time later, Secretary-General Emeka Anyaoku won agreement of Governments to make DSG appointments himself.

What will Kamalesh Sharma's new ASG do? The Marlborough House grapevine has it that the new post-holder may have to tackle the Corporate Services Division (what used to be the Administration Division) which has been rife with unrest in the last few years and whose Human Resources Section (Personnel in the old days) seems to have won for itself the right to report directly to Deputy Secretary-General Mmasekgoa Masire-Mwamba, by-passing the Director completely.

And who will the post-holder be? Once the funding has been secured there will certainly be open competition but will the former Director in question still be a front runner?

Do you have a story to tell  about the evolving structure of the Secretariat? Leave your comment at the bottom of this posting or email us at info@comassoc.org.

Time to bring Ireland back into the fold?

Former Commonwealth Secretary-General Shridath Ramphal challenged a group of prominent civil society leaders last night in Port of Spain when he said it was time to engage with the Republic of Ireland, with the view to bringing that country back into the Commonwealth.

In a thoughtful address to mark the centenary of the Round Table, the world's oldest journal devoted to international affairs, he set out the historical background to Ireland's withdrawal in 1949, just before the London Declaration, which laid the foundation for the modern Commonwealth, was agreed. This Declaration, which came about because of the thorny issue of allegiance to the British Crown, removed that requirement by naming the British Sovereign 'Head of the Commonwealth.' It facilitated the entry of India, which had become a republic and led to the current situation where the majority of member states are now republics.

Over the years, successive Secretaries-General have had informal discussions with people from Ireland on this issue of a return but these have never borne fruit. Now, Sonny Ramphal is saying the time is ripe to revisit it and to begin a serious process of engaging with Dublin on this issue.

Marching along as one

28 Nov 2009
The Non-Commonwealth Three came and apparently swept all before them. Twenty-four hours after a first-ever CHOGM session with the UN Secretary-General, French president and Danish Prime Minister, Commonwealth Heads of Government issued the 'Port of Spain Climate Change Consensus: The Commonwealth Climate Change Declaration' -  and if that isn't a mouthful enough, it carries a further sub-head, 'The Challenge of Our Time.'

Essentially, the heads have pledged to work for a 'comprehensively substantial and operationally binding agreement agreement 'at the global summit on climate change in Copenhagen on 17-18 December, leading, they emphasised, 'towards a fully legally binding outcome no later than 2010.'

And how are any such operrations to be paid for? The Heads recognised the need for an early start to the provision for financial resources, especially taking up British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's plan for a Fast Start Fund, constituting grant funding. They therefore welcomed the initiative to establish, as part of a comprehensive agreement, a Copenhagen Launch Fund ,starting in 2010, building to a level of US$10 billion annually by 2012. Beyond that, this sum should increase. They felt that 10% of this fund should be decidated to small island states and associated low-lying coastal states.

Click  here  for the full statement.

Check whether your head turned up!

28 Nov 2009
Four Commonwealth countries are not attending the current CHOGM in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. They are Dominica and Solomin Islands, Fiji (which was supended from membership earlier this year) and Nauru (which is in arrears and therefore ineligible to attend).

The 32 countires which are represented by Heads of Government:

• Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Cyprus, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Singapore, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, United Kingdom, Vanuatu.

The 6 countries represented at the level of Vice-President, Prime Minister or Deputy Prime Minister and who are not Heads of Govenrment:

• Cameroon, Lesotho, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Zambia.

The 11 countries represented by Foreign Ministers or senior representatives:

• Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, The Gambia, Kiribati, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, St Lucia, Tuvalu.

Is Mauritius the next CHOGM host?

27 Nov 2009
Journalists from the lovely island of Mauritius are whispering that their country has put in a bid to become the hosts for the 2011 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. If successful it would be the first time one of the Indian Ocean island states acted as hosts.

Sri Lanka offered itself as host at the 2007 CHOGM but at that time, embroiled as it was with internal conflict, the offer was received formally, rather than enthusiastcally, as a 'noted' item - which must the bureaucrat's equivalent of throwing cold water on an idea. We are not sure whether Sri Lanka will renew the offer and the jungle drums have also been beating out India's name and even Australia's (Perth).

We should know by Sunday (29 Nov).

In a rancorous mood

27 Nov 2009
A little birdie tells us that Commonwealth Foreign Ministers were in a right old rancorous mood when they sat down to view drafts of various statements put before them in Port of Spain yesterday. The word is that first, they felt that a draft on climate change was being pushed on them by the meeting's chair, the minister from Trinidad and Tobago. Later, they felt that their requests for clarification of the status of suspended member Fiji were not being answered and another uproar ensued. We understand that the meeting went on until the wee hours of the morning which cannot have made the ministers' tempers any better.

Unknown to them, there have been at least a couple of gatecrashers to the meeting. Obviously, security at the Hilton Hotel was not as tight as had been hoped. The Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit Director sat in on the meeting for a few minutes before she was discovered and shown the door. However, another civil society representative sat with a delegation for a while (sadly, not during the above uproars) undetected. Today, she expressed puzzlement that more CSO representatives had not piled in behind her.

The Foreign Ministers meeting has now been over for at least 12 hour and the promised Press Conference is still not forthcoming. Nor is there any word from the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group which met yesterday. Everyone is zipping up. Wonder why?

Stunning - but where are the Heads?

17 Nov 2009
The Commonwealth summit got off to a visually stunning start today (see left) which has not hidden the gaps in the ranks of Heads of Government present. Whether from embarrassment or not, neither the Commonwealth Secretariat nor the host government had figures to hand out five hours after the curtain had come down on the Opening Ceremony.

Canny counting as the delegations were announced on stage, revealed there were as few as 32 Heads of Government - though there were whispers that a couple of 'latecomers' would be jetting in later in the day. This has to be one of the lowest numbers on record.

Worse, of 19 African member countries, only 7 had Heads of Government leading their delegations. Host Prime Minister Patrick Manning of Trinidad and Tobago used his opening speech to make a joke of 'threatening' the Tanzanian President with 'dire consequences' if he did not turn up, but it was clear that many Heads of Government stayed away.

This might be down to straitened economic circumstances, considering the times, but the summit billed as crucial for a grouping struggling out of a recession year and meeting on the eve of the a critical climate change global summit in Copenhagen, seems to have been sadly overlooked. Yet no less than the UN Secretary-General, French President and Danish Prime Minister are here to 'dialogue' with Heads today and urge on them the need for the world to come together on this issue.

For the three of them to turn up here shows the urgency of the situation.

The Heads present (in no particular order): Pakistan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Grenada, Belize, Australia, Britain, Tonga, Jamaica, Barbados, Cyprus, Maldives, Ghana, South Africa, Vanuatu. India, Bangladesh, Swaziland, Mauritius, Samoa, St Kitts and Nevis, Papua New Guinea, The Bahamas, Guyana, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Kenya. Antigua and Barbuda, Singapore, Tanzania, Canada, Uganda, and Trinidad and Tobago.

This list will be updated.

First of the scholars

Talk about coincidences: Commonwealth Association member Mark Robinson, on his way to CHOGM, stopped off for a couple of days in lovely Tobago and stayed, on someone's recomemndation, at the house of a semi-retired Harvard University professor. It turns ou that the professor is Hollis Lynch who was in the first batch of scholars in the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Programme (CSFP), now in its 40th year.

Even after all these years, Lynch, who is Tobagan, remains full of praise for the contribution CSFP has made to scholars all over the Commonwealth, and to the Commonwealth for its comitment to international dialogue.

The CSFP has, of course, been rocked by the withdrawal from its funding of GBP2 million by the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office. At the time, Commonwealth Association members responded handsomely by siging a petition against the decision.

Commonwealth democracy credentials shaken

24 Nov 2009
The Commonwealth's democracy credentials were taken by the scruff of the neck and severely shaken yesterday by a report, Democracy in the Commonwealth, which was simultaneously launched in London and Port of Spain, Trinidad. Authored by 3 electoral and human rights notables, and backed by the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, who wrote the foreword, the 100-page report puts a failing mark on the association's current watchdog role. The report can be found by clicking on the link here .

Among the recommendations:
1.  That the Commonwealth be mandated to automatically observe any member states' elections instead of waiting to be invited;
2.  That regular democratic 'health checks' be made on member states - it has been suggested that civil society could undertake this; 
3.  That the watchdog body CMAG (the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group) is no vigilant or tough enough when serious and persistent violations of democracy and good governance are brought before it.

The report's authors - Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Chairof the Electoral Commission of Africa, Asma Jahangir, Chair of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, and Tim Sheehy, a governance expert and consultant, also said that there was a need for more courageous leadership in the Commonwealth.

Whether you agree with the recommendations or not, this will make a disturbing report, coming as it does 18 years after the groundbreaking Harare Declaration.

The report was commissioned by the Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit and Electoral Reform International Services and (surprise!) was done with the co-operation of the Commonwealth Secretariat. We understand that the Secretariat and Australiam Government funded the study.

Makes you wonder about how the Secretariat is rteacting to this criticism. So far, they're keeping mum. In fact, they're keeping mum about quite a lot of things.

UN SG, Sarkozy and Danish PM for CHOGM?

Extraordinary news filtering out of Port of Spain that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, French President Nicholas Sarkozy and Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen might attend CHOGM. And not just as Special Guests to warm the plush seats of the new Conference Centre off the Savannah: There are whispers that they may take a more active part in lobbying for suppport for key issues at next month's world summit on climate change in Copenhagen.

CHOGM 'purists' may have a heart attack over that one as their presence could put some of the Commonwealth leaders - used to their exclusive 72 hours in the limelight - in the shade.

At one time, there was even wild talk that US President Obama and Brazilian President Lula, as well as other G20 leaders, would be on Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Patrick Manning's invitation list - that is, G20 leaders other than the Commonwealth's own Gordon Brown (UK), Manmohan Singh (India), Stephen Harper (Canada) and Kevin Rudd (Australia).

There has been speculation that Manning may be using CHOGM as an occasion for some international grandstanding, but others believe that the Commonwealth chairman-designate is determined that CHOGM proceedings should break out of the box. And what better place to get high-level consensus than at a summit of 53 countries on the eve of a crucial global climate change conference?

The thing is: What exactly will Ban, Sarkozy and Rasmussen do? Will they speak to leaders at the Executive Session where climate change will be discussed? What will that do to the concept that this is the one occasion that Commonwealth leaders can confer among themselves (after all they meet Ban, Sarkozy and Rasmussen at other conferences)?  One hardly images that a trio of such stature will be content with lobbying around the fringes.

That Robinson Crusoe feeling!

Jargon on national youth policy has been filled with the mind-numbing word 'mainstreaming' in recent years. So it's

a little surprising to find that the Commonwealth Youth Forum 2009 has been shunted out to the tiny, but picturesque island of Tobago. Why the relative but splendid isolation for tomorrow's generation away from the mainstream and on one of the Caribbean's loveliest tourist islands? One would have thought that a spell on Trinidad itself, witnessing the battle against the mainly South American drug cartels, who have induced the rise in killings and robberies on some pretty mean streets after dark, would provide a more suitable 'mainstream' ambience. It's called life's lessons.

Nevertheless, to ensure that the darlings of the next generation do not completely get carried away with that Robinson Crusoe feeling, lots of serious adults in suits came for the colourful opening of the Forum today (Saturday 21 November). The Forum's theme? Invest in Youth, Sustain the World. Let's hope they get off the Tobago beaches long enough to ponder that.\

At least they should be fit and tanned!

 The SG's a tease! 

Secretrary-General Kamalesh Sharma is getting a reputation as a tease. At  9 November's      media conference in  London, he trailed interesting ideas in his trademark management-speak (e.g. 'tipping point organisation with modest financial means but unlimited intellectual capacity') mixed with creative phraseology (exactly what are 'environment good offices'?).

 He's putting before Heads of Government at CHOGM his idea for a Partnership Portal, an IT-based (and we hear Tata-driven) web site which will put 'potential partners in direct touch with each other'. The mind boggles at this 21st Century dating-type agency which will range over the Commonwealth's 2 billion people, tangling them in miles of fibre optics. He called in a transactional dimension.

Sharma is also proposing to gather an 'everything pertaining to mainstreaming of youth in national policy' in one rich and comprehensive resource - probably linked to said Portal above as it's supposed to help policy makers.

The Secretariat also hopes to form a network of electoral management bodies, a peer group who can share 'best practice' and thus act a learning group, raising the standards as they interact.

We can't wait for CHOGM to come around..

Is this the end of the era of "Call me Don"? as the fourth Commonwealth Secretary-General (2000-2008), the laid back, informal Don McKinnon of New Zaland was wont to say?

For bang on time for Commonwealth Day 2009, almost a year after he stepped down from office, McKinnon has been appointed as Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order by The Queen. Awards in the Royal Victorian Order are made personally by The Queen for services to the sovereign.

Surely it will have to be Sir Donald from now, except when he's in New Zealand where they're not keen on standing on ceremony? Sir Don, somehow does not have the same ring!