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Topic Discussion IV
Achieving Good Governance
Controlling Corruption, Improving
Administration
and Strengthening the Rule of Law
Room 1
(16 of 22 pages)
With respect to procurement, which is an area where corruption is easily practiced,
our speak from Namibia, who is here but not here, mentioned Transparency International, an organization that is
housed in Germany, but has chapters in many countries and it's an organization that provides mostly technical assistance
to local governments to develop laws to make the whole process of procurements of tenders both open, transparent
and holding our government officials accountable. And it seems to me that it's an organization that if you're not
familiar with, that NDI could provide some basic information upon request.
Speaker: Thank you, Mr. Moderator. My name is Ahmed Kablani (ph), Member in the Yemeni Parliament. Undoubtedly
the conditions in different emerging democracies differ from one democracy to another, but we do hope that through
this forum we would reach a common understanding on some of the issues raised and discuss and which attracted the
consensus of the participants.
Undoubtedly the emerging democracies face a big challenge which is the economic situation in these democracies,
so whenever they try to go forward in achieving democracy, they would face troubles and problems in the living
conditions of the people and the citizens of these countries. So the best -- the ideal thing is, of course, is
to have -- to achieve democracy hand-in-hand with the development of the living conditions of the people and not
vice versa.
So if we take an example from the adult democracies, we can say clearly that once the economic conditions are bad,
it would reflect on the life of the people and it will affect negatively on the process of democracy. So I do agree
that we should find solutions for the economic problems or the economy problems of these people and to combat corruption
in the first place, in order to achieve better economic development.
It is an important issue to combat democracy, because where there are high prices and the judge, for example, has
many activities to do and many needs to fulfil, so he would be vulnerable to corruption.
I think that in the case where the countries are moving towards democracy, especially moving from the controlled
economy, I think that they issued a good number of laws and regulations that would be very good and very nice,
but when it comes to the application level they face many problems, because there is still a tendency to go to
the past and there is this habit of having this controlled economy and to have individual regulations, for example,
or ruling without giving the law the chance to prevail. And they would also accept those laws and regulations that
are in line with their individual interests and this is to be found in many emerging democracies.
I would like also to stress and reiterate the role of the law and the power of the law and the legal system, because
we know when there is law prevailing, it should be the only target of everybody in society and by giving law its
due role, we can achieve justice and fair living for everybody. I think this is the main obstacle facing the development
of democracy.
For example, in our country, when we modify the constitution, there were new articles introduced that would give
independence to different authorities and I think that this is a very good step forward, but I think that we need
more capabilities and more -- not to be found in a poor country like Yemen, for example, because we cannot train
our cadres (ph) for example, we can not train our government employees and unless we have independence in appoint
judges, for example, we cannot have the independent judicial system.
Second, I want to talk of the respect of the institutional work and the collective work rather than the individual
work and also granting the authorities their independence, because politicians usually interfere, whether they
are in opposition or in the ruling party. They like to interfere in the work of the authorities or sometimes they
find their own ways to go around the regulations and this is a problem that is faced in most emerging democracies.
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