Homespun Museveni delivers the big message

Museveni had a big and relentless message to deliver at this Kampala CHOGM: some countries have undergone a process of total or partial metamorphosis. Feudal and peasant societies have turned into middle class and skilled working class societies depending on industrial production and services.

Others are over-dependent on agriculture with societies that have a large peasant population with a very small middle-class.

India has shifted 400 million people to industry and service although 60 per cent still depend on agriculture. Museveni believes the Commonwealth countries can show the way by gradually harmonising on this process.

He opened the conference with this message and he ended CHOGM on it. He said: “A healthy, educated, skilled and intellectualised population is the greatest resource a country can possess.”

This summit has produced more thoughtful ideas about the way the world should be going forward than the Commonwealth has done for many years.

The report on Respect and Understanding dealing with the gut issues of our times is masterly and demands careful reading. Its chapter headings show the scope. For example -

The Nature and Nurture of Violence

Poverty, Inequality and Humiliation

History, Grievance and Conflict

The last pages contain a fine account showing how the Commonwealth has been a much bigger world player in the last 30 years or so than most people these days seem to think. It is a timely reminder of what the Commonwealth can do.

This CHOGM was a bit lower on turnout of Presidents and Prime Ministers than usual. Five of the 53 countries were absent. Two are suspended, Fiji Islands and Pakistan, and three small ones – Nauru, Vanuatu and St Lucia – could not attend. John Howard of Australia was busy fighting and losing an election.

Four important new faces were Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh (India), Gordon Brown (UK), Stephen Harper (Canada), and President Umaru Yar’adua (Nigeria). Singh brought a huge support team of 240 as India shows a much bigger commitment to the Commonwealth than for decades.

At a time when the promotion and empowerment of women is top of every international organisation’s agenda and especially that of the Commonwealth, this time only one head of government was a woman – Helen Clark of New Zealand.

Many years ago four or five women sat round the table – such powerful figures as Indira Gandhi of India, Margaret Thatcher of the UK, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and Eugenia Charles of Dominica, dubbed the Iron Lady of the Caribbean. Bangladesh had two woman Prime Ministers and Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka was famously the world’s first woman Prime Minister.

It is difficult to know what the Commonwealth can do about this if the people don’t vote women into power. But it does surely mean that bodies like the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association should be doing everything possible to encourage many more women to stand as MPs.

Derek Ingram

25/11/2007

The views and comments in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Commonwealth Secretariat.

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• Country Profile: Uganda