expectations
Ian Black
The 40-plus leaders of the Commonwealth flying into Edinburgh this week could be forgiven for wondering what to expect: it is 20 years since Britain hosted a summit of the ex-colonial club. Yet the Queen has never addressed the biennial event, let alone made the opening speech.
Tony Blair’s modernising government has dispensed with bagpipes, bearskins and other traditional trappings and wants a meeting that highlights the Commonwealth’s role in a dynamic global economy. But with disagreements looming over human rights, the gaffe-rich royal visit to India and Pakistan still echoing, and a coop full of imperial chickens threatening to come home to roost, this may be easier said than done.
Whitehall spin-doctors will be at work from the welcome this Friday to the closing ceremony on Monday to ensure attention stays on the economic declaration, intended to match the 1991 Harare Declaration for post- apartheid political action.
“Trade, Investment and Development: the Road to Commonwealth Prosperity” is the big theme for Edinburgh – the first time a heads of government meeting has had one, and testimony to a laudable wish to produce something more focused than the usual rambling communique.
Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the Commonwealth’s courtly Nigerian secretary general, has been pushing hard for this, building on impressive statistics: the 54 member countries generate 20% of all world trade. Prospects for change and for a bigger role for the private sector were aired at a Commonwealth Business Forum in London this week.
Yet there are doubts about how much can be done on this front. Commonwealth membership cuts across the big trading blocs such as the G7, the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean), the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) – all of them much more important.
And the Commonwealth matters much more to smaller members than to bigger ones. Caribbean countries will be lobbying to maintain preferential treatment for banana exports threatened by World Trade Organisation rules, but Britain can probably do little to help them.
“Chief Emeka likes to say that the Commonwealth means business and business needs the Commonwealth,” laughs one supporter. “But the second part of that statement is even more contestable than the first.”
Britain’s Department for International Development will do its bit to bridge the North-South divide by announcing aid for environmental projects, teacher-training and debt relief for the poorest countries, but political problems seem likely to occupy centre stage.
Critics insist the Commonwealth should stand by its threat, issued after Nigeria’s hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other minority rights activists during the Auckland summit in 1995, to expel the West African country if General Sani Abacha had not made “demonstrable progress” towards democracy by now.
He clearly has not. But the truth is the Commonwealth cannot make such tough decisions. Nigeria’s suspension was hard enough to achieve across a spectrum ranging from Ghana to Canada. Expulsion would tear the organisation apart. And no member wants the oil embargo that would probably be the only effective sanction.
Commonwealth summits tend to be long-winded events and much of the real business will be conducted during the traditional Sunday “retreat” – this year’s is at St Andrews – where “heads” have an informal get-together.
Expectations are low. The Commonwealth is low key and low profile most of the time, and bright lights bring out its flaws – the paralysis in Auckland, when the hangman’s noose hung over the talkfest, was grimly memorable.
Last time Britain stood isolated over its support for French nuclear testing and this weekend United Kingdom prime minister Tony Blair will be closely watched, even though it will be an uphill struggle to generate much interest at home. How many people even know that 1997 is the UK Year of the Commonwealth?
Anyaoku has sensible ideas about balancing political and civil rights with the right to development. “Human rights cannot thrive on empty stomachs and an intolerable quality of life,” he says.
Yet in the face of bloodshed in Sri Lanka, a democratic deficit in Africa and tension between Pakistan and India, his brand of preventive diplomacy and quiet technical cooperation is not riveting material. His recent book was titled, without a trace of irony, The Missing Headlines. Spin-doctors take note.