Former Liberal leader Alexander Downer could become the next secretary general of the Commonwealth, touted as a compromise to rival Caribbean and African candidates.
Downer has made no public comments seeking the job, but conservative British MPs and Australian officials are understood to be promoting his candidacy as a possible last minute compromise when the position is voted on at the Commonwealth Heads of Government (Chogm) meeting in Malta in late November - if the field remains divided.
Downer, Australia’s high commissioner in London since 2014, is understood to be scheduled to attend the Malta meeting, the first Chogm for Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister.
There is a loose understanding that the next secretary general should come from the Caribbean bloc but there are two declared Caribbean candidates – diplomat Sir Ronald Sanders, proposed by Antigua and Barbuda, and former Blair government attorney general Baroness Patricia Scotland, nominated by Dominica, the country of her birth.
There are also two African candidates, Botswana’s Mmasekgoa Masire-Mwamba, deputy secretary general of the commonwealth secretariat, and the foreign minister of Tanzania, Bernard Membe.
This wide field could leave an opening for Downer as a last-minute compromise candidate, according to sources familiar with the pre-Chogm wrangling.
The choice of Chogm’s sixth secretary general comes amid questions about the organisation’s relevance.
Canada and India boycotted the last meeting in Sri Lanka over human rights concerns, and when the Queen opened the 2011 conference in Perth she urged the adoption of recommendations from a commonwealth “eminent person’s group” which found Chogm was “in danger of becoming irrelevant and unconvincing as a values-based association”.
Downer was briefly Liberal leader from 1994 to 1995. Until early 2014 he was the United Nations special adviser to the UN secretary general on Cyprus. The job as secretary general of the Commonwealth could also put Downer in line for a knighthood, like his father Sir Alick Downer, another former Australian minister and high commissioner to the UK.
