The future of the Commonwealth – Part 1

By Sir Ronald Sanders From CARIBBEAN360

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Thursday June 25, 2015 – Questioning the relevance and value of the Commonwealth of Nations is nothing new – for such has occurred ever since the modern Commonwealth was created in 1949. However, doubts have intensified in recent time about the voluntary association of now 53 countries.

Claims are repeatedly made that the organisation is no longer relevant or useful. Its persistent portrayal is that of a relic of Britain’s colonial past or a hypocritical grouping which declares commitments to shared values but fails to uphold them.

The Commonwealth is now, once again, at a crossroads. Its member states can allow it to continue a slow march to oblivion, or they can rejuvenate and re-energise it to make it work in their mutual interest and for the benefit of the global community.

While the Heads of Commonwealth governments are at the centre of these options, the organisation’s Secretary-General and the Secretariat have very special roles. Heads of Government are busy managing the affairs of their own countries, and responding to pressing challenges within their regions and internationally. Therefore, the task of creating a vision and purposes for the Commonwealth that would appeal to leaders of the Commonwealth and invoke their support falls substantially on the Secretary-General.

If the Secretary-General does not proffer a vision of the Commonwealth that is politically appealing to, and motivational for, Heads of Government, and if the Secretariat does not deliver work that excites the imagination of governments, non-governmental organisations, the media, academia and the people of Commonwealth countries, the association could wither and die.

For Britain, the single largest contributor to the budget of the Commonwealth Secretariat and its technical assistance arm, the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation (CFTC), the Commonwealth will have to find a broader base of relevance – other than an association of Britain and its former colonies – to sustain commitment.

As for its former dominion members, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India, the Commonwealth, as it now stands, holds little attraction for advancing their interests in today’s major issues – such as increasing trade, enhancing security, safeguarding against terrorism, and managing the challenges of climate change. Largely, this is because, apart from climate change, the Commonwealth has not taken on these issues – not even as a facilitator of inter-governmental discussion and a catalyst for international initiatives. Even on climate change, the effort made to focus attention at the 2009 Summit in Trinidad and Tobago has not been followed-up in ways that stimulated governments to see the Commonwealth as a beneficial forum.

The governments of bigger developing Commonwealth countries in Africa and Asia are also struggling to find meaning for their priorities in the work of the Commonwealth. With the exceptions of South Africa and India, they continue to be side-lined in the major economic and financial decision-making bodies of the world and they have had to engage non-Commonwealth countries, such as China, to progress their development agendas.

The small member states of the Commonwealth – now numbering 31 and defined as having populations of 1.5 million or less – increasingly question the attentiveness of larger Commonwealth countries to their severe challenges. Low attendance by Heads of Government and Ministers of the big Commonwealth countries at meetings create misgivings in the minds of leaders of small states about the usefulness of the Commonwealth as a mechanism for addressing their concerns.

Small states are at a critical juncture in their history. Increasingly, they are marginalised in the international community.

Both large developed countries and International Financial Institutions behave as if small nations are not only irrelevant, they are a nuisance. Hence the concerns of small states are either ignored or barely tolerated.

Development assistance is drying-up; terms of trade are worsening; access to concessional financing has virtually disappeared. This is occurring at a time when climate change and sea level rise are threatening the existence of some small states and materially affecting the economic life of others. In these circumstances, it is urgent that the causes of small states be advocated strongly and effectively in the Commonwealth and the wider international community.

The Commonwealth Secretariat must, therefore, become machinery for such strong and effective advocacy. For the Secretariat to do so, the Secretary-General must be someone who has fought in the diplomatic and negotiating front line for small states and who has not only the sensitivity to their plight, but the knowledge of their circumstances born of experience.

The Commonwealth is the most important of all multilateral organisations for small states because it is the only forum which provides the opportunity for leaders of small states to meet regularly (and as equals) with leaders of larger and more powerful countries. No other organisation provides the chance for the Head of Government of small Caribbean states, for instance, to meet the Head of Government of Britain, Australia, India and South Africa as an equal to discuss frankly and openly his/her country’s challenges and opportunities. That is why small states cannot allow the Commonwealth to wither and die. Small states need the Commonwealth to be vibrant and effective so that it can advance their interests.

In recent years, an increasing focus by Australia, Britain and Canada (ABC) on democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Commonwealth countries, has led to a widening division within the organisation. The argument is raised continuously by representatives of developing countries that the ABC’s emphasis on these matters is at the expense of economic development upon which the governments of developing countries place high importance. While this perception is mistaken, there have been inadequate efforts to demonstrate that the great portion of resources is indeed spent on development.

These fractious and divisive conditions have arisen from years of neglect in which the Commonwealth could have been reformed and inspired by its leadership. Its slide away from its fundamental purposes should have been arrested and new ways created to maintain its collegiality.

The absence of vibrant initiatives to keep Heads of Government fully engaged in preserving and strengthening the association has led to the inertia and lack of enthusiasm in which it now languishes.

(The Commonwealth – Part II will deal with the role of the Commonwealth and the Secretary-General)

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For more on this story go to: http://www.caribbean360.com/opinion/the-future-of-the-commonwealth-part-1-sir-ronald-sanders#ixzz3erBypx1X

The future of the Commonwealth – Part 2

By Sir Ronald Sanders From CARIBBEAN360

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Thursday June 25, 2015 – In 2009, recognising the dangers to the grouping, Commonwealth Heads of Government at their meeting in Trinidad and Tobago instructed that an Eminent Persons Group (EPG) be established to inquire into the association and provide a report to their 2011 meeting in Australia.

I was a member of the Group and its rapporteur. Chaired by a former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Abdullah Badawi and including experienced and knowledgeable persons from Britain, Canada, Uganda, Australia, Pakistan, Ghana, Kiribati and Jamaica, we produced the report, A Commonwealth of the People: Time for Urgent Reform, that dominated the Australia meeting and has since become a seminal Commonwealth document.

Among the factors that prompted the decision of Commonwealth leaders to look deeply at the Organisations were:

a decline in attendance at meetings by Heads of Government themselves;
the relevance and efficacy of the Commonwealth in a changing international system;
the impact of the Commonwealth on the lives of the people of its member states;
the credibility of the organisation which seemed to eschew the values for which its member states repeatedly declared their commitment; and
a lack of interest by the media and the general public in Commonwealth matters.
The EPG made 106 recommendations for reform of the Commonwealth, particularly the inter-governmental machinery, the role of the Secretary-General and the functioning of the Secretariat.

The recommendations were developed after 18 months of intense analysis of the organisation based on over 300 submissions from Commonwealth organisations and numerous other individual presentations as well as scrutiny of the Secretariat’s budget and work programme. Implementation of many of the original recommendations remains unfulfilled, but they are the core of a new agenda and purpose for the Commonwealth that would make the association relevant and beneficial to its members.

Having conducted the inquiry and confronting the challenges the association faces, the members of the EPG collectively stated: “In an era of changing economic circumstances and uncertainty, new trade and economic patterns, unprecedented threats to peace and security, and a surge in popular demands for democracy, human rights and broadened economic opportunities, the potential of the Commonwealth – as a compelling force for good and as an effective network for co-operation and for promoting development – is unparalleled. For that potential to be achieved giving economic, social and political benefit to its 2.1 billion citizens, urgent reform is imperative for the Commonwealth”.

The CHOGM that should have tackled a ‘reform agenda’ was controversially held in Sri Lanka in 2013 under the Mahinda Rajapaska regime which was subsequently voted out of office by the Sri Lankan electorate. Only 26 of the Commonwealth’s 53 Heads of Government, attended. The ‘retreat’—conceived in 1971 as a private meeting of Heads of Government only, and regarded since then as the heart and brain of the Commonwealth association—was even less well attended.

At the root of the current malaise and paralysis of the Commonwealth is a North-South divide that has crept into the association’s decision-making bodies at the inter-governmental level. Significantly, it is not a divide that is replicated in the more than 90 Commonwealth civil society groups.

But, the divide has shifted the inter-governmental Commonwealth from the use of its greatest strength to wallowing in its greatest weakness. It is that shift that requires the most urgent attention.

The Commonwealth’s most powerful asset is that it is a grouping of countries from every continent of the world; its peoples represent every religion and ethnic group; its members are developed nations and developing nations; big countries and small islands.

It is, essentially, a microcosm of the world. Its greatest strength is that it has strived to find solutions to the world’s problems, not to exacerbate them. It has done so on political issues, none more celebrated than fighting racism in Southern Africa. It has also done so on many economic issues through the work of groups of experts from Commonwealth countries who labored together to create blueprints that were advanced into the international community and encouraged necessary change.

It is those moorings from which the Commonwealth ship has come unloose and which it needs to re-fasten in the interest of the organization, its members and the global community.

The Commonwealth will never be a powerful organization – it is not a military or economic grouping. But it can be an association of considerable influence for its countries individually and collectively as well as for the international community, if its members accentuate the matters on which they find common ground on issues such as: fair and just trade; addressing terrorism; reform of the international financial system to boost economic development; promoting understanding and tolerance of the rights of minority communities; responding swiftly to disasters in poor countries; ending gender discrimination; tackling Climate Change and global warming; championing the interests of its small and vulnerable states; strengthening democratic institutions for economic and social development as much as for political stability.

Of overwhelming importance to the future of the organization, is to recognize that its great success in the past emanated from Summit meetings that were fully and regularly attended by Heads of Government themselves, and by the relationships they developed among themselves and with the Secretary-General as the Chief Executive Officer of the organization.

If the Commonwealth can remain cohesive, rooted in the values that authenticate it within its member states and in the international community, by managing and harmonising the diversity of its membership it can continue to play the vital role in the future that it did in the past.

For the Commonwealth to realign itself to these purposes, hard work is required to bring leaders on board to the ideas that the Commonwealth could be a catalyst for new and informed thinking that would benefit their countries and the world community.

The next Secretary-General will be crucial to this process. The person has to have a vision and almost an evangelical zeal for the Commonwealth’s role for its member states and for the part it can play in global affairs.

He/she also has to have the capacity to advise Heads of Government prudently but fearlessly, to heal rifts between governments, and to find and promote common ground to advance the Commonwealth.

He/she also has to have an understanding of the business community and the capacity to devise ways in which to partner with multinational companies to increase the resources of the Commonwealth in crucial areas such as building resilience to disasters; creating development funding institutions; and financing studies that would derive practical solutions to debt.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Sir Ronald Sanders. Sir Ronald Sanders is a Consultant and former Caribbean diplomat.

For more on this story go to: http://www.caribbean360.com/opinion/the-future-of-the-commonwealth-part-2-sir-ronald-sanders#ixzz3erBSTTT

Related story:

Sir Ron best candidate, says Antiguan PM

From Barbados Today

Antigua’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne believes Sir Ron Sanders is the best man for the job of Commonwealth Secretary General

As Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries await the decision on a regional candidate for the post of Commonwealth Secretary General, Antigua’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne continues to promote his candidate, Sir Ron Sanders, as the one best suited for the job.

The Browne administration is putting forward former diplomat Sir Ron Sanders for consideration, against the former UK Attorney-General Dominican-born Baroness Patricia Scotland, who was nominated by Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit.

A third candidate, Trinidad and Tobago government minister Bhoe Tewarie, has since withdrawn.

But Browne has dismissed Baroness Scotland’s nomination, charging she is “actually an active member of the British Privy Council and therefore is not a Caribbean Candidate.”

“There’s no doubt too that Sir Ron Sanders has the majority support of Caribbean states, and he would have gotten some commitments from various Pacific states. So we feel very comfortable and certainly very assured that Sir Ron will emerge the candidate of choice and he represents the best prospect of the Caribbean getting a seat of the Secretary General of the Commonwealth,” Browne told reporters at the CARICOM Heads of Government Summit today.

For more on this story go to: http://www.barbadostoday.bb/2015/07/04/sir-ron-best-candidate-says-antiguan-pm/