Such
a Civil War
By Sanjay Suri
YES, IT was a very civil sort
of war. No rioting at the auditorium at the Yar’Adua
centre, not even raised voices.
But confrontation it was. Civil
society members took on Secretary-General Don McKinnon
with stamina sustained through the hour-long meeting.
They asked for access to leaders, even to the Commonwealth
Secretariat.
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The Commonwealth Secretariat is too proscribed
by governments to give civil society organisations the access
they want to the heads of government meeting, McKinnon said
at the meeting held at the Yar’Adua auditorium.
“But that has not translated into access at the heads
of government meetings,” McKinnon acknowledged. The
Commonwealth has been unable to “make the kind of changes
that would be acceptable to governments.”
McKinnon walked into a battery of questions over this. Where
was the opportunity for civil society to participate in CHOGM?
And if the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
can provide access to CSOs, why not similarly the Commonwealth?
“I will find out what other international organizations
are doing and what they are not,” he said. “I
hear of things they are doing, and of things they are not
doing. I hear there are things we do ahead of them. But let
me find out.”
That might take too long, meetings like CHOGM come only once
in two years, said Ezra Mbogori, a member of the Civil Society
Advisory Board of the Commonwealth who chaired the meeting
said. “We will tell you now, instead of taking time
to go and find out, you can be sufficiently informed now.”
And so he asked Kumi Naidoo, a member of the advisory committee
of the Commonwealth Foundation to enlighten the Secretary-General
straightaway.
Naidoo had a go. The Commonwealth was once ahead of the game
but is now way behind, Naidoo explained from the floor. Commonwealth
civil society is not exactly fond of the World Bank “but
even the World Bank is way ahead,” he said. Its bosses
recently spent a whole day talking to members of 25 civil
society organisations, he mentioned by way of example.
McKinnon did not accept the instant enlightenment. “I’d
like to find out some information for myself,” McKinnon
replied.
The question of access for civil society dominated the meeting.
If civil society members really want access to heads of government
at the summit, they should talk to their national governments,
he said, because there was a limit to what he could do.
“I face 54 governments who tell me what they want,
and mostly what they don’t want,” he said. “They
pay our salaries. We do not have control over that part of
the agenda. We will need governments themselves to say they
want a different type of engagement.”
Mbogori had spoken of the “gap between rhetoric and
reality” from the Commonwealth in his opening remarks.
If he had been persuaded otherwise by McKinnon, his last word
did not show it.
Governments decide these things “but it cannot be that
he has no influence at all,” he said. McKinnon must
use his good offices for that meeting between civil society
and some heads of government this week, he insisted. “They
need to know, they need to come to our meeting.”
McKinnon smiled. But Mbogori did not give up.
“I am going to assume from his smile that he will,”
Mbogori said. The smile seemed to have meant different things
to the two men.
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