One of the untrumpeted achievements of the Commonwealth over the last few years has been to nurture multi-partyism and bar military rule in its 53 countries.
In the 1970s and 1980s sometimes three or four military rulers could be sitting round the table at the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings(CHOGM). When the leaders met in Trinidad last November there was none. Nor will any ever attend again.
This has happened because at their meeting in Auckland in 1995 the Heads created machinery that effectively ends that possibility.
They formed a permanent committee of eight foreign ministers that could bring about the suspension from the Commonwealth of a country if its democratically elected government is unconstitutionally overthrown.
The Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group(CMAG), as it was called, was the product of what has become known as the Millbrook Declaration.
As soon as the leaders agreed it they suspended Nigeria, which was then under the cruel dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. On the day the leaders met in Auckland, he executed Ken Saro-Wiwa,leader of the Ogoni people, and eight others.
Since then, Millbrook suspension has been used several times. Pakistan was twice suspended and Fiji Islands is currently suspended because it remains under the military rule of Commodore Frank Bainimarama. Zimbabwe was suspended in 2002 and a year later Mugabe angrily pull edit out of the Commonwealth altogether.
The Commonwealth is one step ahead of all other international organizations in creating machinery that is in effect self-disciplinary. And all this has happened in a body that is uniquely purely voluntary and not held together by any treaty.
In Trinidad the leaders decided that after15 years it was time to take CMAG further and tighten the rules so that it could “deal with the full range of serious and persistent violations…”
Some fear has now arisen about the situation developing in Sri Lanka where presidential elections are to take place on 26 January. General Sarath Fonseka, the military commander who headed the army until the end of the protracted ethnic conflict last year, is now standing against President Mahinda Rajapaksa, his former commander in chief.
If he should win he will, of course, have come to power by the ballot box and not by military coup, but he is known as a tough disciplinarian and some fear his election might gradually lead to authoritarian rule, and a loss of the peace dividend.
Military leaders down the ages generally have a bad record and hang on to power, though there have been notable exceptions, such as General Eisenhower, who was in any case elected constitutionally as a civilian. General de Gaulle was a difficult man but carried the French people with him.
In recent years Africa has produced many corrupt and cruel leaders with the notable exception of General Olusegun Obasanjo. He came to power in 1976 and handed over to a civilian government,which was quickly overthrown. Under Abacha, Obasanjo was jailed. After Abacha’s death he returned as a civilian President and in 1999Nigeria resumed full membership of the Commonwealth.
In most cases, not only in Africa but elsewhere such as South America, military leaders have nearly always wanted to hang on to power. To do so, some in Africa have exercised appalling brutality,such as Idi Amin in Uganda and Sese Seko Mobutu in the Congo.
Today’s Commonwealth which came into being60 years ago when India became a republic has always viewed military rule with distaste. It was not long before Pakistan, which with India had become an independent state in 1947, fell victim to military rule. General Ayub Khan took power in 1960 and when African countries began to win independence – the first was Ghana in 1957 – their weak structures soon succumbed to military rule.
The first coup was in Nigeria in 1966.Ghana followed a year later. Although Commonwealth members have generally proved less vulnerable than those countries outside, it became a growing embarrassment to an association that prided itself, however imperfect, as a grouping of democratically elected governments to have people like Amin in Commonwealth membership.
CMAG was convened when any leader seized power by coup. Thus, when General Pervez Musharaff took over in Pakistan in2000 the Commonwealth told him he could not be head of the army and remain President. When he broke a promise to the Commonwealth Secretary-General to take off his uniform Pakistan was suspended.
Sri Lanka does not need to parallel this course. If General Fonseka were, by chance, to end up as President of Sri Lanka, it would be as a result of a constitutional election and he would be complain Mr Fonseka.
But if history repeated itself,professional soldiers, having tasted political power, could be tempted at a later stage to take military power and to stay on and on – and on.