In their initial press release, the Commonwealth Election Observation Mission, which is being chaired by former Jamaican Foreign Minister Mr K D Knight, said they saw ‘a generally well-administered election day but shortcomings in the pre-election period and incidences of inter-party violence taint election’. Read the full press release here on the Commonwealth Secretariat website.

In an article published in The Times newspaper on 3 February 2010, South Asia correspondent Jeremy Page said that the Sri Lankan election is a rare chance for the Commonwealth to play a leading role on the world stage.

For the first time in two years, the Commonwealth may have a chance to raise concerns about deteriorating political freedom in South Asia’s oldest democracy. If it speaks out, it is sure to upset Sri Lanka and maybe some other Commonwealth members with questionable democratic credentials. If it pulls its punches, however, it risks undermining the Commonwealth’s core principles, and setting a poor precedent for other members.

Read the full article on The Times Online here, and let us know what you think below.

The one time we were supposed to hear what was going on – at a press conference with Prime Minister Manning and the Commonwealth Secretary-General – was cancelled yesterday evening. Many people are saying that this is because leaders and officials have not reached agreement on the sensitive issues at the summit which seem to be climate change, Rwanda’s membership, and whether Sri Lanka will be hosting the next CHOGM. In fact, I hear that Rwanda’s membership was supposed to have been announced on Thursday. If President Kagame is, as rumoured, lounging incognito by a pool in Port of Spain, he will have to wait some more.

The highlight for many on Friday was the presence of France’s President Sarkozy. This is being spun as great news for the Commonwealth. I am not so sure. In his press conference, the only real reference Sarkozy made to the Commonwealth was to say how happy he was to be here. The rest of it was about climate change and French domestic matters. This has the potential to distract leaders and the media. In fact, I hear that Sarkozy met the Indian Prime Minister for lunch yesterday. That’s great but it does mean that Dr Singh has one less hour to spend with Commonwealth leaders.

I am told that there’s another press conference scheduled for today. Let’s hope they actually turn up this time. In the meantime, I am off to see what civil society says to Foreign Ministers.

This post was written by Hugh Craft, a senior Australian diplomat and former Director of Political Affairs Division, Commonwealth Secretariat (1979-88)

An international intergovernmental organisation, like the Commonwealth, can be assessed as performing well (or badly) on the basis of two factors: functionality, how it performs in fulfilling its prescribed mandate(s); and outcomes, its results, actions, consequences and the value of its products.

As to functional integrity, the modern Commonwealth’s only prescribed ‘mandate’ is to work for the peaceful resolution of conflict, democratic governance and the rule of law, sustainable economic and social development.

The best indicator of success is that these principles are still relevant to the aspirations of its member states. Yet, strangely, some serious threats to the Commonwealth’s effective future come from member states themselves.

• First, member governments perpetuate outdated and uneven budgetary arrangements, largely unchanged in 60 years and dependent on the British. Key members, developed and developing alike, need to accept greater responsibility for providing their fair share of funding.
• Second, and related, is the relatively recent emphasis by developing countries on constant reviews of the Secretariat, resulting in skewed priorities and fewer resources in the field.
• Third, the Commonwealth needs robust leadership, both from individuals and governments within its ranks. This includes a progressive, imaginative and bold Secretariat, sometimes adventurous in the spirit of Sonny Ramphal (former Secretary-General).

If the Commonwealth wants to attract funding, it needs to constantly lift its performance and maintain a keen sense of focus. But leadership is also needed from governments who understand the value and utility of Commonwealth diplomacy and are prepared to use it.

As to performance, the Commonwealth’s record is mixed but mainly positive. That it exercised a major positive role in South Africa and Zimbabwe in the 1980s is undisputed.  Similarly, its contribution in support of democratic institutions in the Maldives, Uganda, Tonga, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Zanzibar and Guyana are all good examples.

Furthermore, its continuing leadership on small states and its intellectual and political contribution to world economic and trade initiatives are widely recognised.

However, the seeming incapacity of the Commonwealth to play any significant role in critical issues involving member states and which pose major security concerns to the international community remains a major negative. These include the virtual ‘no go’ areas such as the ongoing disputes between India and Pakistan, the civil war in Sri Lanka and the recalcitrant Cyprus problem. Similarly, lingering unresolved issues such as the rehabilitation of Zimbabwe and affirming a constructive role for CMAG as its ‘watchdog’ especially in Pakistan and Fiji, remain.

New challenges bring the chance of wider relevance: its most recent members joining from unexpected sources and the threat of climate change to small island states. Who else speaks for them?

In the end, success for international organisations is judged on the practical, qualitative difference they make on the ground to people’s lives and prospects. There is a renewed interest in multilateralism that provides the Commonwealth with opportunities to prove itself again. The ‘moment’ needs to be grasped to sustain the Commonwealth’s relevance and value into the 21^st century.

Muttiah ‘Murali’ Muralitharan is the leading wicket-taker in Test cricket history and Sri Lanka’s greatest player of all time. He is also a dedicated humanitarian and philanthropist, serving as a trustee of the Foundation of Goodness, which seeks to help Sri Lanka’s rural poor.

In this exclusive interview for the Commonwealth Conversation, he talks about the power of sport to unite people irrespective of race and religion and what the Commonwealth could do to help Sri Lanka build a better future.

Transcript:

What does the Commonwealth mean to you?

It’s about uniting people and getting together countries; there are so many issues that so many countries have. Sports- wise, we get together through sports, I can remember in Malaysia [the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, 1998], as cricketers we got together as athletes normally do in the Commonwealth Games, cricket was also a part in Malaysia, it happened once, and it was nice.

How does cricket, and sport more generally, unite people from different countries and backgrounds across the Commonwealth?

Cricket is a sport, and sport always unites people because people are interested to see some kind of activities going on in each of the countries, sports can unite like that, and another thing is sport doesn’t have any religion or any caste or anything, it’s all one common thing, winning and losing, and participating, and that makes people happier, makes spectators happier, so that makes us more united than anything else.

As a humanitarian, what do you think international organisations like the Commonwealth can do to help the people of developing countries like Sri Lanka?

Oh, they can do a lot of things, developing countries need a lot, especially in Sri Lanka after the war, the North and East are struggling more through that, and so many issues are there, so they can talk to the leaders of our country and come and help them. There are a lot of houses to build, a lot of people need education, so many things they can do, and that would be the ideal thing for Sri Lanka for the next few years.

53 Commonwealth leaders will be meeting in Trinidad in November for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. If you could tell them to focus on one international issue of importance in the coming years, what would that be?

Mainly poverty, especially for food and for the children and people who can’t afford it, because food- every house needs food, and if people don’t eat properly the mind doesn’t work, and if the mind doesn’t work, so many problems can be created in that environment. So if on food shortages they can concentrate, and mind development will be more, so people will see the easing of their life and everything will go more smoothly in those countries.

Kaye Whiteman, a writer and journalist and former Director of Information at the Commonwealth Secretariat says more needs to be done to prevent abuse of media freedoms in the Commonwealth.

Following on my ‘starter’ on July 30, let me go into greater detail on the matter of freedom of expression, one area in which the Commonwealth could engage to sharpen its somewhat bland image. I am aware that, for an organisation which is an association of states, and therefore of governments, this poses a number of problems, but we also have to be mindful that it is a ‘Commonwealth of peoples’.

The Commonwealth played an exceptional role in furthering the political emancipation of both Zimbabwe and South Africa in the last quarter of the 20th century, which highlighted its unique qualities and potential as an international agent of freedom. It was a role that led directly to the Harare Declaration of 1991 on democracy and human rights: the fine words on Southern Africa had to have a more universal application if the Commonwealth was to continue to be taken seriously.

This manifesto was honed and developed into direct action with the 1995 crisis over Nigeria and the Saro Wiwa execution, which coincided with the Auckland CHOGM and the Millbrook Declaration that set up the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG). Some see this as the single most important political function the organisation has at the moment, giving some measure of teeth to Commonwealth activity, normally only influence-based. CMAG has, after some early successes in its positions against illegal governments and military regimes, shown contradictions and limitations, in the face of serious abuses by civilian administrations.

This was what led to the inclusion in the Coolum Declaration (2002) of a commitment to ‘freedom of expression’ as a human right. In pursuit of the recommendations of the High Level Review Report Of that year, Coolum tried to set out a ‘clear set of procedures’ for the Secretary-General and the Chairperson in Office under which CMAG can address ?serious or persistent? violations of the Harare Principles, going beyond the unconstitutional overthrow of member governments. But although we are told issues affecting non-military regimes have been sometimes discussed informally, or ‘below the line’, or in connection with the increasingly important ‘good offices’ function of the Secretary-General, the Coolum procedures have not yet been officially invoked. The concentration of CMAG of late has been more on the cases of Pakistan and Fiji.

There may well now be a case for reviving the Secretariat-generated idea of a more comprehensive reinforced mandate for CMAG to cover certain serious shortcomings of non-military governments that had been aired in 1999, but were rejected at the Durban CHOGM. Too many governments felt affected to be comfortable with such a mandate extension.

The 1999 proposals included, significantly, the banning of opposition media as a legitimate subject for consideration by CMAG ministers, although at that stage the Commonwealth had still to embrace freedom of expression. While a clearly identified pillar of democracy, media freedom is often downplayed because of the nervousness it engenders. After Coolum, the Abuja Declaration of Democracy of 2003 also included among democratic objectives ‘the right to information’, but it seems that the issue of the media is a sleeping dog that many would prefer to let lie.

The case for pressing the matter rests on evidence that the situation of independent media in a number of Commonwealth countries is deteriorating, without the organisation itself paying much interest. It has often been left to outfits like Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists to mobilise international campaigns, especially in countries where the murder of journalists has gone unpunished, like Sri Lanka and the Gambia. The Commonwealth Journalists Association and the Commonwealth Press Union (now being reconstituted as the Commonwealth Press Union Media Trust) do, however, have an honourable record of protesting without making an impact on the Commonwealth as a whole.

How can this be done ‘While it hard for the Commonwealth to promote the idea of journalists as ‘human rights defenders’, if you are going to have a democracy, the media must, for better or worse, be allowed to do their work free from intimidation and fear. On the one hand, in the Coolum procedures, the organisation already has the means to raise the issue, should there be the political will. On the other hand, a more frontal approach, mobilising all Commonwealth media and human rights organisations, with significant and soberly collated evidence of abuses, and perhaps using the Commonwealth Peoples’ Forum prior to the Trinidad CHOGM as a spearhead, could be worth trying in the hope of arousing opinion.

The recent condemnation by Secretary-General Sharma of press censorship by the military regime in Fiji (prior to its suspension) marked a small but welcome breakthrough on this subject, highlighting an issue that the Commonwealth, whatever the difficulties, has an obligation to confront.

Kaye Whiteman
Writer and journalist: Former Director of Information, Commonwealth secretariat; currently a Committee Member, Commonwealth Journalists Association, UK Branch.

It is with a certain heavy pen, not to say a heavy heart, that I find myself sitting down to write about one of the old chestnuts of international affairs. Yes, it is time to ask once more, how relevant, in this our 21st century, is the Commonwealth…

It will be interesting to see if the Conversation will address one issue that has been of concern to some of us for a long time, the problem of media freedom in Commonwealth countries.

Although since the 1990s, the Commonwealth has tried to be on the cutting edge of human rights/democracy issues through the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG), the Fourth Estate has hardly come under scrutiny. The Coolum Declaration of 2002 included, for the first time in any Commonwealth declaration, freedom of expression as a human right, but there are rarely any official allusions to the problems that journalists in particular experience in a number of Commonwealth countries (for example, Sri Lanka and the Gambia).

We certainly will be inviting discussions about media freedom, starting now.

Does much more need to be done to press for true media freedom across the Commonwealth? Or is the status-quo adequate? Does the Commonwealth have any right to interfere in how individual members deal with their press? And what is your country like on the issue of press freedom?

We’ll kick it off here with a controversy corner from the RCS magazine about

Should Sri Lanka should be suspended from the Commonwealth?

What do you think about the Commonwealth’s role in Sri Lanka? This is your chance to have your say…