Saturday, November 28 2009

THE CARIBBEAN is important to the Commonwealth, says Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma, when he addressed yesterday’s opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

Noting this was the third time that Commonwealth leaders were meeting in the Caribbean, which is home to one fifth of the Commonwealth’s membership, Sharma said: “The Commonwealth belongs here, as it belongs anywhere, because it is a Commonwealth of 53 countries from all continents which have come together with a shared will.

“It is a Commonwealth of all the governments and all the peoples.” Jamaica and the Bahamas hosted the CHOGM in 1975 and 1985 respectively. The next CHOGM in 2011 will take place in Sri Lanka,” he added.

Sharma said it was important to note that while it was not founded on a formal charter, or by any specific legal statute, “the Commonwealth is a champion of democracy, of development and dignity for its people and of respect for diversity, but nowhere can it do these to perfection.”

Listing the objectives which he hoped would be achieved at the CHOGM, Sharma recalled that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II once memorably referred to the Commonwealth as “the original World Wide Web. Here in Port-of-Spain, we need to refresh the ways in which those networks join us, and especially the ways in which they use technology to weave an ever-closer web of partnerships,” he stated.

Sharma added that “in a world of headlong globalisation, we are a great global good, contributing to the globalisation of wisdom.”