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Topic Discussion II
Building Public Trust
Elections & Legislatures
Room 1
(20 of 21 pages)
Speaker: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The subject I am going to deal with is
related to elections. In my country there is an independent commission that supervises elections and it is formed
every four years. It is composed of the different parties in Yemen. At the same time that I am voting these committees
are present as well as the delegates of the candidates and the legal system is also supervising this process. They
have the right to supervise and review what has taken place in the electoral process.
The opposition parties which we have discussed during this meeting, when the opposition is not successful it says
that the election process has not been correct, but when they assume power they say that the election has been
correct 100%. We cannot decide upon this and we cannot doubt this question as emerging democracies we have to move
forward and we have to correct the mistakes if we remain weeping upon the milk we will not be able to take a step
towards establishing democracy. There are opposition parties that lie on foreign aid. I thank you.
Chair: Thank you. I would like on behalf of our Mongolian colleagues particularly Mr. Bobbaatar to make
two or three points that he has asked me to make and I shall be brief I have no alternative.
First of all he agrees with all of the ideas of transparency, communications, independent structures, participation
of women and they are already in the Mongolian constitution, but the problem that they face today is choosing the
procedures and systems like elections law and election systems, laws governing political parties, political contributions
and regulation of a free media, particularly in allowing fair representation and notions of that nature.
The question that they face is how best to choose the right systems and the right procedures. They need to make
sure that the systems are right for their conditions and that obviously it varies country by country by country.
They point out that they need to pay attention to small procedures and specific components of the law.
If I may editorialize for a minute, the challenge that they face is the challenge that so many of you have already
faced. I would ask that if you get the opportunity to share some of your views around the next two days to do that.
The other commitment that I will make is to take that problem back to NDI and see what they have in terms of suggestions
to address it.
I will conclude by making a couple of announcements and one observation. I have no intention of trying to summarize
what has been said around this table. It has been terribly diverse but at the same time it has been very consistent
and it strikes me that the comments that have been made here when I compare it to the comments that were made in
the paper that was distributed are so divergent. That is not a bad thing, which is an important thing I think for
all of us to recognize. What I hear in the last three hours is that the concerns that you have are much more fundamental
and basic than are listed in the five or six points here as suggestions that might come forward. I think that is
a particularly important thing for people like NDI and UNDP and other organizations to recognize that we are dealing
with more fundamental questions perhaps before we can deal with some of the more practical. I thank you for your
patience. I thank you very much for your contribution. I regret terribly that we can't sort of now sit down and
spend the next two days going through all of these things because we need to. I would like you have a quick very
quick intervention.
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