Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in the 21st Century.
By Canadian Parliamentary Review
- Release Date: 2000-06-22
- Genre: Law
Description
The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of independent sovereign states, each responsible for its own policies, consulting and co-operating in the common interests of their peoples and in the promotion of international understanding and world peace. This article looks at the role of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association within the Commonwealth. Since 1991 the size of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association has burgeoned. In that year we had 127 member Parliaments, today we have more than 140. Since 1992, Anguilla, Cameroon, Ghana, Mozambique, the National Parliament of Pakistan and its four provincial Assemblies, Seychelles, South Africa and its nine provinces, Uganda, Fiji, Nunavut, Scotland, Wales and Nigeria have been either admitted or readmitted to CPA membership. Unfortunately the October 1999 coup in Pakistan resulted in its national and provincial Parliaments being put in abeyance. The return of Nigeria to democratic government will have a tremendous impact on our Association, especially since its constitution establishes a system which is in many ways more akin to the Congressional system than the parliamentary one.
