Trinidad and Tobago – and 20 other CHOGMs

For many leaders at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Trinidad and Tobago this was their first such summit. These days greater democracy is bringing more frequent changes of government and so now at each of these gatherings many faces at the table are new.

No one is likely again to notch up a record like Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore. He was at 13 summits between 1966 and 1989. President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia attended 12.

The meeting in Port of Spain produced a rich crop of new leaders. One, who played a leading role in the climate change debates, was Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia, who went on to offer to host the next summit. He looks likely to become an influential voice in the Commonwealth as for several years was one of his predecessors, Malcolm Fraser.

Climate change has put an especially interesting figure in the forefront – the lively young President of Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed. A few weeks ago, in a brilliant move to highlight the plight of small states, he put his ministers in diving suits and held a cabinet meeting under water.

True it was a publicity stunt, but it worked, alerting the world to the plight of island states like Maldives which nowhere stands more than one metre above sea level and could disappear in a few decades.

An active and outstanding figure in Trinidad of a quite different kind was one of today’s great world leaders, the wise, dignified and self-effacing Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh. Under him India is playing an increasingly influential role in the Commonwealth generally.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the UK was not a new face in Port of Spain although this was only his second CHOGM. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, however, he was active at several meetings of Commonwealth finance ministers. In Trinidad he has to take credit for considerable groundwork for the successful climate change session with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and Danish Prime Minster Lars Løkke Rasmussen.

Trinidad reminded the Commonwealth that of its 54 members there is now only one woman leader among them – Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh – although Commonwealth projects and programmes for years have been aimed at raising the role of women in all activities.

Yet in 1983 three women, all of them formidable, were at the New Delhi summit – the host, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher of Britain and Eugenia Charles of Dominica.

This situation is hardly the fault of the Commonwealth. Blame democracy. These are the leaders the electorate serves up. A glance at the group photos of leaders of the European Union meetings still hardly includes a female face.

So now that the captains and the kings of the Commonwealth have departed again for another two years these are the reflections of someone who has reported 21 CHOGMs going back to the one held in Singapore in 1971.

In those days the Commonwealth contained only 32 member countries and that meeting lasted eight days. They were more leisurely days, although no one thought so at the time.

Derek Ingram

Key Links:

• Country Profile: Trinidad and Tobago
• CHOGM
• Profile: Derek Ingram