Commonwealth Change-over

For the first time in its history, the Commonwealth has an Asian Secretary General: Kamalesh Sharma, who until recently was Indian High Commissioner to the Court of St. James’s, so he has only had to move his office a few hundred metres from Aldwych to Pall Mall. This ‘first’ is rather odd, when one considers that a majority of the Commonwealth’s citizens live in Asia. But in truth, the Commonwealth has generally been well served by its Secretary-Generals, and the outgoing New Zealander, Don McKinnon, will be a hard act to follow. Among the issues Mr Sharma will inherit are Pakistan (currently suspended from membership, but likely soon to be back in after democratisation) and Zimbabwe, which excommunicated itself under Robert Mugabe. Interesting times, indeed.

When I asked Don McKinnon recently what he thought were his greatest achievements during his eight years as Secretary-General, he answered, ‘I hope I took somerthing good and made it better. Looking back now, I believe we are stronger in four ways. First, as an organisation of values; second, as an organisation of its time and ahead of its time; third, as an organisation that works on behalf of those who need it most; and fourth, we are stronger for being a more open organisation, both within the Commonwealth as an alliance of governments and of peoples, and beyond.’

The Commonwealth often unfairly gets short shrift in the mainstream Press, but it an organisation valued by a large segment of humanity and works in a consensus way which is a model for our confrontational world.