Commonwealth 'must reconnect with members'

The Commonwealth risks becoming an irrelevance, its new director warned at a London meeting of parliamentarians from all over the world this week.

It could either slip into "quiet retirement or recapture that bold spirit invented sixty years ago," Dr Danny Sriskandarajah told delegates to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association's governance seminar.

The meeting, which took place at The Royal Commonwealth Society, was an opportunity for parliamentarians to inject new thinking and purpose into the Commonwealth, in an age when Empire has been long consigned to the history books.

MPs from more than 30 countries, among them Malaysia, Lesotho, Canada and Pakistan, are attending the two-week governance seminar.

They were asked to consider what the Commonwealth should or could do for them and how it could raise its profile.

Many believed it should do more to help their countries maintain democratic rule when they are faced with the threat of dictatorship and lawlessness.

Several raised examples of when they felt the Commonwealth should have done more.

Reoccurring military rule in Pakistan, is a huge problem, said several MPs.

Legitimising generals by extending the diplomatic hand of friendship to them does not help, they said.

More could have also been done in Uganda, when citizens suffered under Idi Amin; and more recently in Kenya's post-election violence and in Sierra Leone.

However, not all MPs agreed. One attendee said he felt that the Commonwealth couldn't and shouldn't interfere in the internal affairs of members.

Dr Sriskandarajah reminded attendees that the budget of the Commonwealth Secretariat is around one precent of the UK's Department for International Development annual budget.

Could grand aims of saving democracies be achieved on such modest means?

However, one MP from Asia was more upbeat, arguing that the Commonwealth's most important resources were not financial but political.

It counts many revered statesmen among its supporters and has a wide global reach with contacts not only in the political elite but amongst grassroots all over the world.

Polling commissioned by the society in seven Commonwealth countries shows that levels of knowledge about the institution are low.

Surveys indicate only half of the citizens in the countries surveyed knew the Queen was the head of the Commonwealth and a quarter of Jamaicans think US President Barack Obama who leads the orgainsation.