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Topic Discussion IV
Achieving Good Governance
Controlling Corruption, Improving
Administration
and Strengthening the Rule of Law
Room 5
(8 of 18 pages)
Madam Speaker: Very, very interesting. There are a number of people who
would like to speak but before I open the floor to discussion I would like to pose three questions which I hope
will guide our discussion.
We have already had substantial discussion on the rule of law but I would still very much like to hear from the
various countries participating what they perceive as the major obstacles to establishing a vigorous rule of law
in society and what are the most important kinds of interventions. Are they training, restructuring, funding of
the judicial system that are required to strengthen the role of law.
Our second theme is administration and I would very much hope that we can discuss what concrete steps leaders can
take to reform government in order to make it more responsive, to reduce red tape. I think everyone understands
what I mean by red tape and to modernize and improve the delivery of services by government through the people.
Third, on the issue of corruption, what specific measures in your countries beyond what we have heard have been
helpful or important in reducing corruption, not only among elected and appointed officials but also within the
career civil service and what are the specific interventions, the legal interventions, any other interventions
that we might develop to help deal with corruption.
Some countries publish all government regulations in all the languages of their country. Others provide hearings
and an opportunity to comment on regulations and I think the point of the importance of remembering the civil society
that is behind government, how do we establish linkages that effectively articulate the needs of civil society,
vis a vis the government and the intent of government, vis a vis civil society.
A number of you have asked to speak. I would like to speak with the distinguished Foreign Minister of Yemen who
has been one of the leaders in the democratization here. Mr. Minister.
Abdulkadir Bajammel: Thank you, Madam Chairperson. Today we are attacking an extremely important point because
it deals primarily with the conclusion of all the deliberations and discussions we had that are supposed to lead
to good governance.
If our discussions in the past were about backgrounds, now we are discussing results and I am going to speak about
the first points that has been raised by the previous speakers. They are three ladies who spoke about corruption.
I don't know if they spoke about women's corruption or men's corruption. At the same time, I say that corruption
should be spoken of by a specific angle.
The sources of corruption - corruption in itself has not come as a satanic plague. It stems from specific sources
and the sources that existed, they have grown up. It has also been a source of damage for our society as a whole.
We speak of corruption, considering it as a part of the process, but it is provisional. It is not fixed. If we
come to the situation in Yemen, we find out that when we speak of corruption, we should come back to the situation
that we had during the division of the country and this is the political corruption that we had in the country
which we divided. We were supposed to have unification in 1961 so it remains in corruption until 1969. It was corruption
under many aspects and it was a crime against our population and we have to pay a big price that was in blood and
people and of course in suffering for the people. However, we constituted part of the cold war. This is why we
had new mechanisms of the integrated state and after 1994 we had elaboration of tendencies as follows. We are 18
million people today. We are governed by an administrative staff and we have an administration school and mind
that has not been created by the state of unification. It was a division state. This is why we had two schools.
Today we want to set and determine the origins of corruption. We had the first census, we found out the first type
of corruption. We actually had around 6% during the population census. Nowadays we are 3.7%. We should not have
3.7% growth rate. It should be 3.8%. However, during the division of the country, whenever the census was declared,
a part of the population used to flee to the other part because they were afraid of the corrupt state and whenever
they fled to the other part of the country they were afraid of the state's corruption because in this big territory
that covers the two parts, there was only smuggling action and it is part of corruption and as a result of this
we were informed that see them twice. The number of the population increased from 3.1% to 3.7%. However, it is
a typically Yemen situation. It cannot be repeated. It is only once in the history of the Yemen people when the
census was done for the new unified country.
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