C'wealth's credibility on the line
2002-09-24 09:20
Canberra - The ink on the Commonwealth communiqué delaying action on Zimbabwe was barely dry before analysts and member states began debating the relevance and very future of the group of mostly former British colonies.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who led a three-nation Commonwealth meeting in Nigeria to discuss Zimbabwe, did not hide his disappointment at the group's decision to overrule his desire to impose sanctions on President Robert Mugabe.
"I think the Commonwealth is the poorer because there hasn't been unanimity on this view," Howard told the BBC.
South Africa and Nigeria blocked Howard's efforts to impose sanctions on Mugabe, targeted by the West for the confiscation of white-owned land and allegedly rigging his re-election in March.
In two interviews Howard granted before leaving Nigeria, media commentators got straight to the point.
Cable news network CNN asked whether the Commonwealth wasn't really "a toothless bulldog". The British Broadcasting Corp held off until its fifth question to ask if the Commonwealth didn't "look very toothless indeed".
Howard offered a muted defence.
"Well I think the Commonwealth has gone through difficulties like this in the past and survived and I think it will in the future. But I'm concerned about the Commonwealth values and one of those values is a democratic process," he said.
Commonwealth officials said privately the inconclusive talks marked a major setback for the 54-nation group.
Black and white divide
Australian Senator Sandy Macdonald, a member of Howard's conservative government who saw Mugabe's alleged election abuses first hand as a Commonwealth election observer in March, said the failed troika meeting had ended the group's credibility.
"If it can't impose its own Harare declarations on the country from whence the Harare declaration were born, then you have to have some doubts about the relevance of the organisation," said Macdonald.
The 71-year old Commonwealth, moulded from the ashes of the British Empire, pledged in Harare in 1991 to commit its members to democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
Since then, the group which represents 1.7 billion people from nations as diverse as Canada, Pakistan and Tuvalu, has suspended Nigeria in 1995, Sierra Leone in 1997, Pakistan in 1999 and Fiji in 2000, all following coups or rights violations.
In March, the troika agreed to a sort of half-expulsion for Zimbabwe, suspending it from the ministerial meetings but not from non-political events, like the Commonwealth Games in August.
It was a far cry from the 33-year exile of South Africa, which lasted until apartheid government was ousted in 1994.
Chris Reus Smit, an international relations analyst at Australian National University, said the difficulty in going any further with Zimbabwe lay in black Africa's loyalty to Mugabe, hailed as a nationalist hero when he came to power in 1980.
Senator Macdonald agreed, saying white leaders understandably flinched at accusations by black Africa that the former British rulers were trying to re-assert influence in the region.
"It's an easy ploy, that's Mugabe's great line - that we're just the running dogs of the former colonialists," he said.
Reus Smit said the Commonwealth would survive the Zimbabwe crisis, but its credibility may not escape intact.
"If the Commonwealth role is not to facilitate peace and co-operation and good governance among and between its members, what is it there for?" he asked.