The Ingram Column: The Nymph Calypso Should Be Pleased
26 November 2005
Derek Ingram - My View
 |
| "We in the Commonwealth are our own worldwide network" |
The theme of this Commonwealth summit is networking for development. Neatly, in the programme for the opening ceremony, Malta described its history of seven millennia as seven thousand years of networking.
To show this to the 52 leaders - only one Commonwealth member, the tiny island of Nauru in the Pacific, was missing - an elaborate dance show opened with the nymph Calypso lying asleep in a cave dreaming of that history.
We were taken from the cave dwellings of 4000BC to World War Two when the people of 20th Century Malta took refuge from Hitler's bombers for months in those same caves.
It was Malta's day to show off. Through a dramatic curtain of water across the stage the Commonwealth leaders and Queen Elizabeth watched the dancers enact Calypso's dreams.
For half an hour or so this was brief artistic relief from the several messages of the opening speeches. President Olusegun Obasanjo, CHOGM host in 2003 and chair of the Commonwealth for the last two years, put the focus on corruption.
He pointed to the recommendation of a Commonwealth group that "as a matter of urgency," member countries should sign, ratify and implement the UN Convention against Corruption.
He said: "In Nigeria we are currently engaged in a determined crusade against corruption and the recommendations could not have come at a better time.
" Corruption has been the one major source of underdevelopment, instability, conflicts, delegitimation of leadership and governance structures, and the intensification and deepening of disagreements in some of our countries.
" We need to adopt a zero-tolerance policy to this cankerworm."
President Obasanjo also referred to the novel plan being worked on by the Commonwealth to use the wisdom and know-how of people who have retired as presidents and prime ministers and thus answer the question, "Is there life after State House?"
Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon had a strong message to the Heads. He took the opportunity to remind them that the Commonwealth's long-admired technical assistance programme, the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation (CFTC), is short of funds. For some years, governments have not been delivering the money it needs.
Although the fund is highly admired and its project work is constantly being requested, it has halved in value in the last decade. Mr McKinnon said: "At the very time when we are trying to tackle the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) it is obvious that the CFTC needs a big injection of funding."
The failure of governments to raise their contributions to the CFTC is symptomatic of the Commonwealth's biggest problem - lack of adequate resources to carry out all the work it is expected , and asked, to do.
In a longer than normal opening speech, the Queen reminded leaders that at the Durban CHOGM six years ago she had said that "we in the Commonwealth are our own worldwide web."
She said that the Commonwealth 'web' was built not only on technology but also on groups and associations, formal and informal, between people.
She added: "These occur in their most intimate form in families, extend to neighbourhoods and to other forms of local governance and stretch to countries and regional groupings. If the electricity fails, our Commonwealth networks do not."
After seven millennia of Maltese networking, the nymph Calypso should have been well satisfied with what was said in Malta today.
* The views expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of the Commonwealth Secretariat.
delicious
digg
reddit
facebook
stumbleupon
News feeds