Delegation To Attend London Conference

Close to 700 Commonwealth Parliamentarians and parliamentary officials will meet in London over the coming week to mark the Centennial of the founding of the Commonwealth’s oldest organization, and a Bermuda contingent will be among the participants.

Minister of Transport Terry Lister, MP Darius Tucker, and Senator Joan Dillas Wright will attend. Clerk to the Legislature, Mrs. S. Wolffe is accompanying the Delegation as Secretary, and she will also attend the 48th General Meeting of the Society of Clerks at the Table.

Minister Lister will be the discussion leader at the workshop entitled: “Commonwealth Initiative in Handling Migration Issues.” Other topics to be discussed are “Women as Agents of Change in Small Societies”, “Countering Threats to the Stability of Small Democracies: Piracy, Drug Trafficking, Terrorism” and “Strengthening Democracies in Small States: Youth Leadership Training, Citizen Involvement and Parliamentary Reform”.

The 57th annual Conference of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association will be officially opened Monday in Westminster Hall by HRH The Princess Royal as the Association marks 100 years since its founding as the Empire Parliamentary Association at a July 1911 meeting at Westminster of British Parliamentarians and Members from five dominion Parliaments.

This year’s conference will be attended by Members from nearly 170 Parliaments and Legislatures in the nations, states, provinces and territories of the Commonwealth who will discuss issues under the theme of “Reinforcing Democracy”.

“Commonwealth Parliamentarians today all stand as equal partners with a shared commitment to the common goal of advancing parliamentary democracy through the development and sharing of best practices at this conference, the CPA’s other meetings and through our constant and now instant communications throughout every year,” said the Chairperson of the CPA Executive Committee, Hon. Dato’ Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal, MP, Malaysia’s Minister of Rural and Regional Development.

“Parliamentary democracy is all about evolving new processes to meet the challenge of change through engaging all our people in the development and implementation of solutions shared at CPA forums.”

Members will hear major assessments of global issues facing Parliamentarians by CPA Secretary-General Dr William F. Shija and Commonwealth Secretary-General H.E. Kamalesh Sharma.

Dr Shija said the London meetings will discuss how the CPA and its member Parliaments and Legislatures can expand their role in transforming the Commonwealth into an even more effective global champion of good governance and equitable development.

The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association is composed of the Parliaments and Legislatures in 53 of the 54 Commonwealth nations and their overseas territories. It has a membership of more than 16,000 Members of national, state, provincial and territorial Assemblies.

The only Commonwealth country not currently in the CPA is Brunei, which does not have an elected Parliament. The CPA Branch in Fiji Islands is in abeyance as the South Pacific country’s Parliament has been dissolved by the current military government.

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