President Michel returns from CHOGM-President talks of need to build on our democracy |28 November 2007

The President however said that although the country has made remarkable progress in its democratisation process, the time has come to put in place institutions and structures so as to broaden this process and allow our young democracy to become more mature.

President Michel was speaking to journalists at State House following his return in the country yesterday morning after attending the Commonwealth Heads of State Meeting (CHOGM) which took place in Kampala, Uganda over the weekend.

The interview with President Michel took place just after he had met with the outgoing secretary general of the Commonwealth Don McKinnon, who also arrived in the country yesterday morning on board the same Emirates flight as President Michel.

In his interview, President Michel said that the Commonwealth was happy with the progress that Seychelles has made in its democratization process and he believed that many countries can learn from Seychelles’ experience.

Referring to the CHOGM itself, the theme of which was “Transforming Commonwealth societies to achieve political, economic and human development”, President Michel said that the meeting was an occasion for the heads of state of the 48 countries who attended to discuss the fundamental values of the organisation which are respect, tolerance, rule of law, democracy, good governance, sustainable development, among others.

It is along those lines that the summit adopted a proposition to suspend Pakistan from the Commonwealth as a result of President Pervez Musharraf’s emergency rule and that the Asian country would remain excluded pending the restoration of democracy and rule of law.  

Another topic of discussion at the meeting was climate change which President Michel said was a problem not only affecting the Earth in general but most specifically small island states.

President Michel said it was important that an organization like the Commonwealth makes the world aware of the negative impacts of climate change and that the big countries which are most responsible for polluting the atmosphere take measures to ensure that vulnerable small island states are protected against such adverse effects.

At the same time the meeting discussed ways and means of mitigating the effects of global warming.
President Michel said that based on these discussions, a communiqué was issued at the end of the meeting which expressed the Commonwealth’s grave concern about climate change, which is a direct threat to the very survival of some Commonwealth countries, notably small island states. 

He said the communiqué will be presented at an environment conference to be held in Bali next month.
The Bali meeting will discuss an agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol which aims to reduce emissions of the gases that cause global warming but which expires in 2012.

Noting that the issue of vulnerability of small island states has been “all talk”, President Michel said it was important for big and powerful countries of the Commonwealth such as Britain and Canada exert their influence on other G8 countries to see what kind of structures could be put in place to help those small countries.

President Michel noted that the meeting also urged changes within certain institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF which were set up at a time which no longer reflect the reality of today, an issue which he said received the strong backing of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

During the meeting Kamalesh Sharma, India's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, was named the new Commonwealth Secretary-General. He will take office on 1 April 2008.