Orin Gordon
Editor-in-chief
Over a family dinner just before the New Year, Sir Ronald Sanders considered withdrawing from the contest to succeed Kamalesh Sharma as Commonwealth secretary-general. In a chance encounter in a Toronto restaurant, he told me that the Caribbean could not get its act together, and was split over three candidates—him, Dominican-born Baroness Patricia Janet Scotland, and T&T’s Bhoe Tewarie. He ended up staying in the race, and today, as the Malta summit wraps up, must now wish that he hadn’t.
Sir Ronald Sanders is the son-in-law of Sir Shridath Ramphal, a former secretary-general.
Baroness Scotland’s victory denied the Ramphal/Sanders household the mother of all Christmas celebrations.
Sir Ronald, a highly regarded broadcaster in Guyana in the 70s, has few peers in handling the media, with his quick grasp of the complex details of the world of diplomacy, development and foreign affairs, and ability to analyse it instantly, fluently and simply.
Like many smart lawyers, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, QC, takes a micro-beat thinking before talking—processing the question, choosing her words carefully, and delivering them in the soft, cultured tones of the English upper class. In person she’s easygoing, but keeps a cool, businesslike detachment.
She smiles readily, especially with her eyes. She wears the garb of the British aristocracy easily.
Not for her the rah-rah of the House of Commons and Prime Minister’s Question Time. She was to the peerage born.
There’s much to like about her choice as secretary-general.
She’s bright, accomplished and well qualified.
That needed to be said before the second thing—which is that she is the first woman to become secretary-general.
Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Sirimavo Bandaranike of Sri Lanka, Dame Eugenia Charles, Portia Simpson-Miller, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, Julia Gillard of Australia and Helen Clark of New Zealand have served their countries and/or contributed greatly to Commonwealth affairs over the years.
It’s way past time the Commonwealth caught up with its own membership, and the times.
And—in a group in which small countries rule by number and population—the thing that matters a lot in terms of symbolism is that the SG Designate is a black woman.
However, it’s a stretch to say she was a Caribbean candidate.
She is English right down to her elegant patent leather pumps—as English, some would argue, as David Cameron.
A prominent member of the British establishment and the House of Lords, she held a number of key posts in the British government and Cabinet, becoming Gordon Brown’s Attorney General.
She was, to all intents and purposes, a UK candidate.
None of this is to question her Caribbean-ness or sense of rootedness in the country of her birth.
She simply did not look or feel a Caribbean candidate to the majority of Caribbean leaders, and Dominica’s single-minded pursuit of her candidacy has done some damage to regional comity.
Dominica, the criticism went, supported a British candidate who happened to be born in Dominica, an island she left when she was two years old, and her tenuous link to her birthplace mattered more than holding the line on Caricom solidarity.
Certainly the process was messy, with a number of Caribbean leaders thinking that they’d extracted a promise from Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit to back Sir Ronald, and Dominica clumsily extricating itself from that.
It’s a once in a lifetime post for a region.
After Sir Shridath held the post between 1975 and 1990, it went to Africa, Oceania (New Zealand) and India.
The Caribbean felt that it was its turn again, and the hope was that Caricom would field one candidate.
It did not help Sir Ronald’s case that a report in London’s Telegraph on Wednesday, the eve of the election for SG, linked him to alleged fraud which allegedly involved the Antiguan government he represented in London as high commissioner.
His lawyers said in response to the report that he has always conducted himself with propriety.
A very interesting question for a reporter to ask him is whether he thinks the timing of the report was coincidental.
In any event, he was eliminated after the first round. There were two pieces of irony.
Baroness Scotland did well in the first round with the heavy backing of the European bloc (and some Caribbean support).
Secondly, with Sir Ronald eliminated, Antigua and Barbuda ended up voting for her over Africa’s candidate in the final round.
What the SG Designate does next will be interesting.
She needs to reach out to Caribbean governments which did not support her candidacy, and once in the chair in April, deliver for the Caribbean in some way.
The Caribbean’s problem is that it’s not quite poor enough, and the Commonwealth can seem skewed towards Africa in terms of delivery of aid and technical assistance, and Asia and the Pacific on issues such as climate change.
Baroness Scotland needs to do some family healing.