INSIDE ISSUES
COMMONWEALTH STRENGTHENING: A MATTER OF CONFIDENCE
The Editor’s note
Does the new Commonwealth Charter strengthen the organization significantly enough to make it “stronger, more resilient and progressive…and…more relevant”? Is it in urgent need of a fresh injection of these characteristics?
The drafting of a Commonwealth Charter was the first and most detailed recommendation of the Eminent Persons Group charged by Heads of Government with remaking the Commonwealth. The Group’s 2011 report entitled “A Commonwealth of the People: Time for Urgent Reform” even offered a draft of a possible charter, called for public consultation on its text and made this one of its key recommendations for saving the Commonwealth.
Heads of Government agreed, the public was consulted and on Commonwealth Day 2013 Her Majesty The Queen signed the Charter as Head of the Commonwealth. We publish the Charter to open this issue. We follow it with two opinions on the document, one from Prime Minister Hon. Kamla Persad-Bissessar, MP, of Trinidad and Tobago and the other from Rt Hon. Hugo Swire, MP, the United Kingdom Minister of State responsible for the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is sometimes dismissed as a “club” since it has no convention binding its member countries under international
law and it doesn’t appear to some to be doing anything. The new Charter does not fill that purported gap as it is not legally binding. It is essentially a compilation of principles agreed by Commonwealth Heads of Government in decades of communiqués and so, as the Eminent Persons Group put it, it is the statement of a Commonwealth “spirit” shared by its governments and people. Such an ephemeral-sounding statement is hardly a plan of action. The Charter is not immutable, as international conventions tend to be, because the door is left deliberately open for future expansion and development. Critics will argue this leaves the door open for governments to water down or remove inconvenient principles. But even its harshest critics should acknowledge that changing a Charter provision would be more difficult and publicly more damaging than agreeing a new communiqué paragraph that might not sit comfortably with a paragraph lost in the output of a meeting decades before.
Leaving the Charter open also gives Parliaments and Legislatures an opportunity to strengthen their position in a document that makes much of democracy but surprisingly little about the main institution that brings democracy to life in each country.
Ironically, the process of 54 governments agreeing to have a
92 | The Parliamentarian | 2013: Issue Two
Charter, drafting its text, consulting with organizations and citizens around the world about its contents, keeping all 54 diverse governments signed up to it and presenting it for formal signature by the Head of the Commonwealth, all within a year and a half, calls into question the urgency for Commonwealth reform in the first place. Make no mistake: getting 54 governments around the world to agree to nearly 1,800 words is not easy. But if that many governments, organizations and people were willing to move that quickly and do all that for the Commonwealth, surely its future cannot have been as bleak as the title of the Eminent Persons Group report implied. Perhaps what the Commonwealth needed – and still needs – is a public injection of confidence that it is already strong, resilient, progressive and relevant. The act of adopting a Charter certainly does that.
South Africans who fought for the end of apartheid could provide such an injection. After their first non-racial election in 1994, many spoke openly of the Commonwealth’s contribution in helping them to launch a new country. This year, the national Parliament of that country hosts the 59th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference and its National Council of Provinces (NCOP) Chairperson, Hon. Mninwa Johannes Mahlangu, MP, serves as the Commonwealth Parliamentary
Association’s President. Mr Mahlangu opens the special Profile on South Africa published with this issue as he writes about the structure and role of his unusual Chamber. Hon. Max Sisulu, MP, the Speaker of the National Assembly, then writes on how his Chamber is refocusing its processes so the Assembly and its Members contribute fully to the development of South Africa.
Their respective Deputy Presiding
Officers, Hon. Thandi Memela, MP, and Hon. Nomaindya Mfeketo, MP, write about child rights and sectoral Parliaments, while three Ministers, Mr Trevor Manuel, MP, Dr Rob Davies, MP, and Mr Fikile Mbalula, MP, write on key aspects of their work in national planning, trade and sport respectively. Dr Mathole Motshekga, MP, the African National Congress’s Chief Whip in the Assembly, recalls the demanding process of uniting all South Africans into one fully democratic nation with a Parliament that is relevant, responsive and representative.
Ms Lindiwe Mazibuko, MP, the Parliamentary Leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, writes about what she sees as a significant problem with that Parliament, and proposes a solution which calls for electoral reform.
Mr Cedric Frolick, MP, Mr R.J. Tau, MP, Mr Ben Skosana,
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