Ali­cia Llanos

The Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in Port-of-Spain has been de­clared a big suc­cess, not on­ly by CHOGM chair­man Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, but al­so sev­er­al oth­er Com­mon­wealth lead­ers. Their over­all vote of con­fi­dence was reg­is­tered dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the close of the three-day meet­ing. Lead­ers held their fi­nal ses­sion of talks at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel. Speak­ing sub­se­quent­ly at a brief­ing at the Hy­att, Man­ning said the 20th CHOGM meet­ing had been very suc­cess­ful in that six doc­u­ments had been signed by all 52 mem­bers of the Com­mon­wealth. These doc­u­ments in­clud­ed a state­ment of Com­mon­wealth's val­ues and prin­ci­ples, a state­ment on non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases, the cre­ation of a Com­mon­wealth elec­tion man­age­ment body and a youth de­c­la­ra­tion.

Man­ning said it was both an ho­n­our and a plea­sure to host the dis­tin­guished heads of state and felt that the col­lab­o­ra­tive agree­ment among the na­tions would di­rect­ly con­tribute to the fu­ture suc­cess of the UN con­fer­ence on cli­mate change in Copen­hagen, Den­mark, in three weeks. He said the suc­cess of the meet­ing was fur­ther high­light­ed by the par­tic­i­pa­tion of both the pres­i­dent of France and pres­i­dent of Den­mark, in the dis­cus­sion. He added that the in­clu­sion of na­tions not mem­ber states of the Com­mon­wealth was high­ly un­usu­al, but rep­re­sent­ed the strength of multi­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion, and the Com­mon­wealth as an in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion. Pres­i­dent of South Africa, Ja­cob Zu­ma, said the meet­ing's suc­cess lay in the na­tions' proac­tive re­sponse to the chal­lenge of cli­mate change.

Like Man­ning, Zu­ma said the suc­cess­ful dis­cus­sions at the meet­ing would con­tribute to the out­come of the meet­ing in Copen­hagen. "There is no doubt that we (the Com­mon­wealth) will make a dif­fer­ence in Copen­hagen," he said.

Pres­i­dent of Papua New Guinea, Sir Michael So­mare, said the meet­ing, above all else, "gave a voice to all small is­land states," which, he added, were of­ten most af­fect­ed by the ef­fects of cli­mate change. Prime Min­is­ter of New Zealand, John Key, said CHOGM's strength was its abil­i­ty to fos­ter bi­lat­er­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions among mem­ber coun­tries, which he said proved that de­spite scep­tics, the Com­mon­wealth was still a rel­e­vant in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Deny­ing crit­i­cism that the Com­mon­wealth was no longer a rel­e­vant in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion, Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Kar­malesh Shar­ma said suc­cess of CHOGM was ev­i­dence of its rel­e­vance. Shar­ma said CHOGM ex­em­pli­fied the im­por­tance of a com­mon pur­pose among na­tions to make glob­al change, which was in form of de­vel­op­ing strate­gies to slow and stop cli­mate change. He al­so said the Com­mon­wealth's suc­cess was al­so at­trib­uted to its mind­ful­ness of equal­i­ty among all na­tions, large or small, de­vel­oped or de­vel­op­ing. He said that it was through the Com­mon­wealth that many small­er states had been able to se­cure in­ter­na­tion­al trade agree­ments and pro­mote the ex­pan­sion of their economies.

Prime Min­is­ter of Malaysia, Da­to' Sri Mo­hd Na­jib bin Tun Ha­ji Ab­dul Razak, said this CHOGM was his first and that the meet­ing it­self was proof to him that there was in­deed a rel­e­vance in the Com­mon­wealth. He said this rel­e­vance came in the abil­i­ty of var­i­ous na­tions, all of dif­fer­ent so­cial and eco­nom­i­cal back­grounds, to gath­er to­geth­er, and un­der the same val­ues ad­dress glob­al is­sues that are great im­por­tance to each one. He said the Com­mon­wealth's strength lay in the "friend­ship and ca­ma­raderie" that was forged be­tween na­tions striv­ing for a sim­i­lar goal. Pres­i­dent Zu­ma said in such a di­vid­ed world, an or­gan­i­sa­tion was need­ed to unite na­tions to re­spond to glob­al chal­lenges. "That or­gan­i­sa­tion is the Com­mon­wealth," he said.