In a few days Commonwealth presidents and prime ministers meet for their two-yearly summit – this time in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago (27-29 November).
Fifty-one leaders will be there. Fiji Islands will be absent because it is now fully suspended, still has a military government and is now fully suspended from the Commonwealth..
The other absentee, tiny Nauru (population 10,000) in the Pacific, is not eligible because it is long overdue in paying its subscription.
Although the actual summit now lasts under three days, the whole event is spread over ten days, with foreign ministers meeting beforehand and up to 1,000 delegates from civil society organisations holding a People’s Forum with numerous workshops and discussions. The first will be a Commonwealth youth conference, which convenes in Tobago.
One of the most important workshops will be on human rights and freedom of expression, subjects that now figure in the first paragraphs of every Heads of Government communiqu?.
Journalists are deeply concerned about the plight of colleagues in several countries, most notably The Gambia, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. They want know why some countries are not living up to their promises.
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings CHOGMs) are the world’s oldest international summits.
You could date them back to the first colonial conference in 1887 that became the Imperial Conference from 1911 and continued till World War Two began in 1939.
On their resumption in 1944 these summits, renamed Commonwealth Prime Ministers Meetings, led to the real change from Empire to Commonwealth in 1949 after the independence of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
In the 1940s and 1950s they grew from gatherings of just five leaders to 11 and lasted nine days or more. Even the 1979 summit lasted seven days.
Such is the pace of today's world it is impossible to get leaders to attend any such meetings for this length of time. Much has been lost as a result.
So Commonwealth summits no longer start with a daylong survey of the global scene as seen by the leaders region by region. Those sessions were of huge value to get the personal perspectives of their colleagues.
Time was when Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew would hold the meeting enthralled when he gave his southeast Asian perspective.
On such occasions the leaders were totally candid and frank. Once one said on emerging from such a meeting: “That was the best debate I have ever heard anywhere. I wish it had been held in public. But of course then it would not have taken place.”