Don’t write old alliance off yet, says McKinnon

Secretary-General Don McKinnon says those working at the coal face in Third World towns and cities see the advantages of the Commonwealth. Picture / Reuters

Think about the greatest hits of the Commonwealth, and Zimbabwe does not immediately spring to mind. Especially after yet another set of elections in the southern African nation was widely condemned as a fraud.

Yet Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon does not see absolute failure in the case of Zimbabwe's suspension in 2003 at the last leaders' summit (it then quit).

"In a way the Commonwealth came through with flying colours," an upbeat McKinnon told the Herald last week, speaking from London. "In other words, the Commonwealth upheld its own values."

The Commonwealth deserved an "A" for effort. "But for achievement, we just didn't achieve anything."

McKinnon, New Zealand's former Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, has just passed his fifth anniversary in the job and has three to go.

And he is keeping very good company these days. He and his wife, former radio journalist Clare de Lore, were preparing to go to the wedding celebrations at the weekend of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.

It is that sort of job.

Last week he was in Africa visiting Malawi, Kenya and Uganda. In February it was Brussels and Paris to try to drum up momentum in the World Trade Organisation's Doha development round.

In March it was Namibia, Botswana and South Africa, where he had his first substantial meeting with President Thabo Mbeki since the pair's public differences over Zimbabwe.

Mbeki, neighbour and ally of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, led a challenge to McKinnon's second-term appointment at the 2003 Nigeria summit because of his firm handling of Zimbabwe.

The challenge failed. In fact, McKinnon received more votes in 2003 (42 of the 53 member countries) than when he first got the job in 1999, with 36.

"There was no antagonism," said McKinnon about the Mbeki meeting. "When you have been in politics a long time you get used to these sort of things. They come and they go."

Of course he hopes that Zimbabwe will return to the Commonwealth fold one day but that is not looking like a short-term prospect. Zimbabwe won't even be on the agenda at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Malta in November.

That dishonour will go to Pakistan where, despite democratic reforms since the 1999 coup, President Pervez Musharraf has failed to meet his promise to relinquish his role as Chief of Army Staff by December 2004 - a promise that saw Pakistan's suspension from the Commonwealth lifted.

"There is still clear concern, even some close to annoyance, that President Pervez Musharraf reversed his position to give up one of his offices and decided to hang on to both of them," says McKinnon.

"A number of Commonwealth countries were prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. He had achieved a lot in his period in office in democratising things but then to suddenly take a step backwards at the end did not please many Commonwealth countries."

The Pakistan situation was at a stage where it was important to keep close to the country. But the fact that it was on the Malta agenda "is considered to be something of a mark against them".

McKinnon, along with the United Nations envoy Sergio de Mello - killed by a suicide bomb in Baghdad - played a role in getting Fiji back on the democratic track after its last coup.

But nothing has compared to the Commonwealth's No 1 trophy - being at the forefront of pressure to end apartheid in South Africa - as it was harshly reminded last month by the Guardian newspaper.

An editorial described the Commonwealth as being "in sad decline". It remained a useful network for deploying "soft power" but "its finest hour was fighting apartheid".

McKinnon says the "somewhat early obituaries" from time to time reflect the views of someone who doesn't know the organisation, hasn't kept up to date with progress or believes it represents the past.

"We have got a past. The question is 'Are you relevant to your membership today?'

"I talk to [aid specialist] Bob Geldof from time to time. He knows what we are doing, he is very happy about the kind of work we are doing. Bishop Tutu is always praising the Commonwealth for what it does.

"For those who work in the developing world, who are at the coal face in places like refugee camps who work in Third World towns and cities, they clearly see the advantage of us in what we do."

McKinnon peppers the interview with various achievements he believes make the organisation relevant.

He has cleared out the organisation's deadwood - but naturally puts it far more diplomatically than that.

He is the voice of the Commonwealth (1.8 billion people) in promoting a good outcome for developing countries in the Doha round - work recognised by a gift of 17 million ($30.6 million) from the European Union commission for developing countries.

He boasts of the Commonwealth's work in debt recording and management systems for developing countries to repay debt, 45 at present, a record so good that the World Bank recommended that China use the Commonwealth's expertise as well, and it is.

He is especially proud of the Commonwealth ambassadors for positive living - a group of 200 young people who are HIV-positive and are paid a small sum by the organisation to talk to others about it. They try to stop the spread of it and at the same time remove the stigma.

"They are just so remarkably mature and so remarkably together," says McKinnon.

He is proud of its good offices role that sees experienced and respected individuals working quietly alongside governments for change.

Former Justice Minister Doug Graham has been his envoy in the Kingdom of Tonga, and former Governor-General Sir Paul Reeves has been a steady adviser in Guyana.

McKinnon says the good offices role may have played a part in the recent advance in Tonga where democratically elected MPs were invited by the King into his Cabinet.

"I think others played a part too, but we do say to all our members, 'Have a look at the Harare principles [for good governance]. Are you adhering to them? Can we help you adhere to them?'

"I find you get a very good hearing from any leaders on issues like this providing you're not megaphoning it across the ocean or across the continent."

This past week, he has been attending a Pan-African conference in Kenya promoting the Commonwealth's so-called Latimer Principles, defining the separate roles of the legislature, Executive and judiciary.

Perhaps mindful of recent tensions in New Zealand, he said: "There is not a country in the world where the Executive isn't invariably putting pressure on the legislature or even putting pressure on the judiciary to advance their desires. That is normal in a democracy."

But what suits one country, won't suit another. A democratic institution that suited a colonial power might not suit independent countries today which want democratic institutions that they clearly see as their own "and will defend".

Cameroon, for example, was getting help to design a new electoral commission.

McKinnon spoke about the evolution of the Commonwealth from the death of the British empire when he was invited to give the Churchill Lecture last month at the Churchill family home, Blenheim Palace.

The honour was more keenly felt when McKinnon learned the only other non-British people to have been asked were former United States President Bill Clinton, former United States Defence Secretary Casper Weinberger and former French President Valerie Giscard D'Estaing.

"Contrary to other international organisations," he said in his lecture, "the Commonwealth was not the product of a political blueprint, it was not the brainchild of bureaucrats, it was not the result of a communique, it evolved naturally out of the history of the British Empire.

"'It just growed,' to quote the inimitable Homer Simpson," McKinnon said.

McKinnon acknowledges in his interview that the eras of his first two predecessors, Arnold Smith and Sir Shridath (Sonny) Ramphal, were dominated by apartheid and that since its demise there has been no similar single big issue.

That is possibly why he takes a measure of success in the Zimbabwe effort where others see failure. Among such a disparate lot of countries, there was complete agreement as to what the end goal was, if not agreement as to how to achieve it.

Prince Charles is set to become Head of the Commonwealth when he takes the throne after his mother, though it is not an automatic accession. All leaders will have to agree.

McKinnon said he had detected no resistance to the Prince.

Prince Charles, the Guardian noted, had described the Commonwealth as "confused and muddled".

McKinnon defends the Prince saying no, he was merely saying others said it was confused and muddled. He also said: "It's a family of nations with all the closeness and complications that that implies."

McKinnon has the last word: "The Commonwealth is bit like Paul McCartney or Rod Stewart," he says. "It keeps on keeping on.

"The public occasionally says it is time you disappeared or trashes you for what you do, but then you produce another record and away you go."