TNAG-0925-FCO40-1143-Commonwealth-Parliamentary-Association-(CPA)-annual-conferen-1980 — Page 54

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Twenty-fifth Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference

should continue, because elections were completely fair and above-board, and the vocal Opposition missed no opportunity to question an Act or its enforcement.

The leader of the Gambian delegation said that a Government that was responsiv the wishes and dictates of a majority or a minority, rather than of the people as a whore, would sooner or later degenerate into a dictatorship and Parliament would become a sham. The suppression of rights and freedoms was the cause of many world problems. The refugee problem, in particular, was costing an unquantifiable amount of human and material resources that could have been deployed into, for instance, research on alternative forms of energy and means of increasing the prosperity of all countries.

Sri Lanka's 1978 Constitution marked a watershed in the history of constitutional development, incorporating some of the functional aspects of the country's past, as well as of British, American, and French systems of government, guaranteeing fundamental rights, privileges and freedoms, and re-establishing the independence of the judiciary and freedom from political control and interference. Every person had the right to seek relief from the Supreme Court for any infringement of fundamental rights through Executive or administrative action.

The country's commemoration in 1981 of 50 years of adult franchise was a source of pride, and would be recognised by agricultural, irrigation, or social projects, which could become the subject of aid from those countries that had already undertaken aid schemes in Sri Lanka.

Other delegates stressed that the Commonwealth community would be strengthened by an ability to accept modern changes, and its unity would be unassailable if all members honoured the integrity and sovereignty of each country, and adopted the Declaration of Human Rights and its covenants, which reflected the conscience of civilised humanity as a whole.

A Cook Islands delegate observed that it was a contradiction to talk about freedom when laws, conventions, and customs were aimed at reducing it. The most important aspects of life were fairness and justice, but what was fair in one circumstance might not be fair in another. Greater freedom created greater problems. If people in government were imbued with a sense of fairness there would be less exploitation, persecution, and victimisation.

Since 1951, any Australian who married a person born anywhere in the world could bring that spouse home, declared an Australian delegate. That was an important human freedom. He knew Australia's migration policy had its weak spots; he knew that, although the Aborigines were no longer inhibited by legislation, that was only part of the battle, but he would have no objection to a body like a Commonwealth Commission of Human Rights coming to Australia to examine things on the spot. Defensive attitudes should be abandoned, and, when human rights were concerned, the intervention of another nation not only ought to happen but must. Advice from people outside would often help a country to go further along the road to human freedom and the protection of human rights.

The idea of human rights was universal, declared a Lesotho delegate, but those rights did not give men the licence to overthrow the Government by unlawful means. His country was unique in having representatives of all political parties in the Cabinet.

People in South Africa definitely knew that Britain had minerals and factories in the Republic of South Africa and would always protect that country, because it was its ally.

While it was vital for associations like their own to consider human rights, a United Kingdom delegate was concerned that, for so many years, the crucial point that rights must be balanced with responsibilities had been totally ignored.

The Council of Europe had a Human Rights Charter listing 16 pages of human rights without a hint that they should be balanced in any way with responsibility, yet only in a disciplined society could true freedom of the individual exist.

Democracy was practised fully in Barbados, said a delegate, but the same could not be said of some other Commonwealth countries that claimed a democratic government. The Westminster model had never failed, but politicians sometimes manipulated constitutions and persecuted the minorities that did not support them. The precept "Government of the people, by the people, for the people" should never be disregarded.