Gail Alexan­der

?Com­mon­wealth lead­ers are prepar­ing for their meet­ing in Port-of-Spain to­mor­row amidst a wake-up call from a Com­mon­wealth think-tank that the 60-year-old group­ing risks fad­ing in­to ir­rel­e­vance un­less lead­ers take "bold ac­tion."

The warn­ing is con­tained in a re­port on a glob­al pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the Com­mon­wealth which was con­duct­ed by the Roy­al Com­mon­wealth So­ci­ety (RCS).

It sug­gests that re­build­ing the Com­mon­wealth's pro­file was a crit­i­cal and ur­gent chal­lenge. The re­port, "Com­mon What – Emerg­ing Find­ings of the Com­mon­wealth Con­ver­sa­tion", was re­leased at Tues­day's launch of the Com­mon­wealth Busi­ness Fo­rum (CBF) by RCS mem­bers. The re­port was done to mark the Com­mon­wealth's di­a­mond ju­bilee an­niver­sary which will be cel­e­brat­ed at Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) in T&T from to­mor­row un­til Sun­day. Tit­u­lar head of the Com­mon­wealth, Queen Eliz­a­beth II, ar­rives for a two-day state vis­it to T&T to­day, ahead of CHOGM. The Queen is the pa­tron of the RCS. The RCS, found­ed in 1868 and based in Lon­don, launched the con­sul­ta­tion in Ju­ly as the largest ever pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the fu­ture of the Com­mon­wealth. The con­sul­ta­tion en­gaged tens of thou­sands of peo­ple across the Com­mon­wealth's 53 mem­ber states, via on and of­fline ac­tiv­i­ties.

The re­port presents ev­i­dence that the Com­mon­wealth has a "wor­ry­ing­ly low pro­file" among the pub­lic and many pol­i­cy-mak­ers, ac­cord­ing to the RCS. Less than one third of peo­ple in the Com­mon­wealth can name any­thing the as­so­ci­a­tion does and the ma­jor­i­ty of those can on­ly cite the Com­mon­wealth Games," the RCS re­port not­ed. The re­port not­ed that many pol­i­cy-mak­ers "strug­gled" to iden­ti­fy any area in which the Com­mon­wealth clear­ly and dis­tinc­tive­ly added val­ue. It al­so stat­ed that those work­ing with­in Com­mon­wealth or­gan­i­sa­tions seemed "frus­trat­ed" the as­so­ci­a­tion was be­ing ne­glect­ed by mem­ber gov­ern­ments and "lacks an am­bi­tious vi­sion for its fu­ture." RCS re­search al­so re­vealed the Com­mon­wealth was more of­ten val­ued by an­glophiles and "those nos­tal­gic for an im­pe­r­i­al past" than those com­mit­ted to the in­ter­na­tion­al­ist val­ues of the body. Among lu­mi­nar­ies in the study who were crit­i­cal of the Com­mon­wealth's cur­rent sta­tus were for­mer Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter Mal­colm Fras­er; Pak­istani crick­eter and politi­cian Im­ran Khan; Kenyan vice Pres­i­dent Kalon­zo Musyoka; and Dame Kel­ly Holme, pres­i­dent of the Com­mon­wealth Games in Eng­land.

Di­rec­tor of the RCS Dan­ny Sriskan­dara­jah said: "This is a wake-up call for the Com­mon­wealth. Af­ter 60 years of fan­tas­tic work the Com­mon­wealth has to choose be­tween qui­et­ly re­tir­ing or bold­ing re­vi­tal­is­ing it­self for the 21st cen­tu­ry. "Lead­ers meet­ing in T&T this week need to do more than is­sue long com­mu­niqu�s. "They need to con­vince a new gen­er­a­tion un­fa­mil­iar with the Com­mon­wealth that this as­so­ci­a­tion can tack­le glob­al chal­lenges in a mean­ing­ful way."

The re­port rec­om­mend­ed a re­newed fo­cus on the fol­low­ing:

�2 PRIN­CI­PLES– to dis­pell wide­spread con­fu­sion about what the Com­mon­wealth stands for to­day; n PRI­OR­I­TIES–to heed calls for it to fo­cus on where it can add val­ue; and,

�2 PEO­PLE–to heed the need for en­gage­ment of a younger gen­er­a­tion or risk dy­ing out and for more in­no­va­tion, co-or­di­na­tion and bet­ter re­sources.