Mugabe will miss CHOGM
The controversial Centre For The Performing Arts, which is still under construction at the Princes Building grounds opposite the Queen’s Park Savannah, will be the site for opening ceremony of November’s Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGHM).
The building with its unusual design has been under construction for a couple of years on a start and stop basis: the structure may just be ready for the November 27-29 conference.
The restoration of Stollmeyer’s Castle, where the Government wanted Queen Elizabeth 11 to stay, will certainly not be completed. Restoration work which was supposed to start in January 2008 has not yet got underway.
Some 53 leaders from the far-flung Commonwealth will attend this conference and in this sense it will be bigger than the recent Fifth Summit of the Americas in which 34 hemispheric leaders participated.
The Summit with its security overkill, blunders of protocol, extravagance and controversy is gone and almost forgotten. Well, not quite, because Port of Spain businessmen are still counting their losses and will hope that there will be no red zone, yellow zone and blue zone restrictions which effectively killed business.
Prime Minister Patrick Manning has given the public assurance that there will be less restrictions.
South Africa’s newly elected President Jacob Zuma will be expected to attend as will be the politician who is elected India’s new President.
Canada’s President Stephen Harper, who attended the Summit, is also expected to be in attendance as well as 14 Caricom leaders.
Zimbabwe’s despotic President Robert Mugabe will not be in attendance having withdrawn from the Commonwealth in December 2003.
He was not present at the last conference which was held in Uganda in November 2006.
Queen Elizabeth II as head of the Commonwealth will formally open the conference.