Commonwealth Commission
The Commonwealth Commission is the executive body of the Commonwealth of Peoples. It implements the Commonwealth's diplomatic, military, economic, political and cultural policies. It provides and maintains facilities for the Commonwealth's other bodies and for other public purposes. It carries out the instructions of the Commonwealth's other bodies within their own spheres of authority. It essentially manages and administers the Commonwealth's limited shared public sector.
The President of the Commission is elected by the Commonwealth General Assembly. The other members are each appointed by an individual member. Of the 15 other members, Nabarro Abarca and the Resurgent Dream each appoint 3, Laneria 2 and each other member 1. Each member other than the President heads a specific Commonwealth Secretariat with a particular area of responsibility. The various Secretariats are permanently attached to specific members. However, any member's selection can be rejected by a majority vote of the General Assembly.
The Commission is the only body whose members owe their allegiance to the entire Commonwealth and not to the member state by which they were appointed. Members of the Commission are not allowed to take instructions from their own government after their appointment and any attempt by their own government to influence their behavior on the Commission is discouraged.
Sometimes the various Secretariats under the Commission with all their resources and employees are referred to as the Commission. While this usage is not official, the term Commission is popularly used in this broad sense at least as often as it is used to refer to the official body.
Responsibilities of the Commission
The Commission is responsible for overseeing the Commonwealth's joint foreign policy, serving as a guardian of the treaties binding the Commonwealth together, providing the Commonwealth's moral and political leadership and generally overseeing the implementation of all Commonwealth treaty provisions and joint programs. On a more trivial note, the Commission is responsible for providing the facilities and security for all other Commonwealth bodies.
The Commission is most visible in the Commonwealth's many foreign embassies, in the Commonwealth Defense Force and in the Commonwealth Space Force. It is also visible as the organizer and admnistrator of Commonwealth relief efforts to disaster areas and war zones and as the organizer of various cultural exchange programs between Commonwealth member states. However, the bulk of the Commission's day-to-day work involves technical measures to implement the terms of various Commonwealth treaties and intergovernmenatal policies, a task which mostly involved providing a framework (and often technical electronic equipment) for coordination between specific state organs of different member states.
Criticism of the Commission
The Commonwealth Commission is frequently criticized for being non-democratic. Critics point out that it is not a simple civil service board but the political executive of the Commonwealth, serving as the only unified political leadership for the body as a whole. They argue that the fact that Commission is appointed rather than elected means that it lacks the democratic legitimacy necessary to perform such a function.
Critics have also complained of the specific appointments of a number of Commission secretaries, arguing that members use seats on the Commission as honours for accomplished statesmen not suited for the particular position they are appointed to. This sort of political appointment, critics say, gives the Commission all the flaws of a parliamentary government without the redeeming feature of democratic legitimacy.
