Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma’s CHOGM diary

The slightly lugubrious look on the trilby-wearing double bass player in the calypso trio really didn’t say it all... ‘CHOGM 2009’ got under way on Saturday in Tobago with the Youth Forum: it was then carried forward last night at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth People’s Forum, with the flourish not just of calypso – Caribbean wryness and rhythm rolled into one – but with a clear marker. There is business to be done here, and our hosts will make sure that we do it, and enjoy it in the doing. It was a great occasion, and the best possible launch of a people-centred discussion to a Commonwealth summit which returns to the Caribbean for the third time, after Kingston and Nassau before them. Prime Minister Patrick Manning is rightly proud that in 2009 his country has hosted not just the Commonwealth of 53 but also the Organisation of American States of 34. From President Obama and a country of 300 million, to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and a populace of over a billion, to Apisai Ielemia and the 14,000 people of Tuvalu: the world has come to Trinidad and Tobago, and it, in turn, has come to the world.

The People’s Forum is not quite what the name suggests: it is for civil society, not the general public. But, as such, it speaks to the Commonwealth not just of governments but also of peoples. Civil society is one of the jewels in the Commonwealth crown: I spoke in my address about the three-legged stool of Commonwealth public sector, private sector, and ‘third’ sector – or government, business and civil society. Civil society often feels as if it is the wobbliest leg, and Government often views it as the awkward leg that sticks out the furthest. But the stool needs three legs to stand, and civil society brings so much to our Commonwealth debate. With nearly 100 organisations around the world bearing the name Commonwealth – from the 16,000 members of the Commonwealth Parliamentarians Association to the rather less members of the Commonwealth Museum Association – it brings yet more to our table, often in the heroic circumstances of few funds and fewer staff.

For some, civil society rightly means global advocacy. And where it does, I feel it needs new urgency and passion, and ever smarter, 21st century, ways of talking not just to governments, but to its own constituents. For me, though, civil society means local bodies, picking up the pieces of community life where government cannot – in health, education, and more. As such, it does some of the very best work in the Commonwealth. Only a month ago I was in Marlborough, a lovely market town in Wiltshire, UK, which has some of the strongest civil society links I have ever seen. It twins with a fishing village in The Gambia called Gunjur. It’s a project which has won accolades from DFID, the UK government’s development arm. It has paid dividends in schooling, doctoring, and especially in the empowerment of women. That is the Commonwealth not of sentimentality or words, but of practicality and deeds, rooted in values and friendship.

Practicality, deeds, values and friendship. It’s my hope for the Commonwealth that all four will be given free voice this CHOGM week in Trinidad and Tobago. They sang heartily at a TV interview with the Caribbean New Media Group this afternoon, under the unforgiving lights of one of the oldest studios in the Caribbean. For all the serious conversation and the questions and answers about serious issues – of which more tomorrow, I think: this was, after all, the weekend… – I found myself talking of the great Trinidadian author CLR James and Beyond a Boundary – the most lyrical paean of praise to what is, in my view, the most sublime of rituals: cricket. ‘What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?’ wrote James. What indeed? T&T bats and bowls in depth: I envisage a CHOGM of both runs and wickets. This will be metaphorical Test Match cricket as its most competitive, especially for the Secretariat team in the field with me.