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Topic Discussion II
Building Public Trust
Elections & Legislatures
Room 1
(7 of 21 pages)
Chair: Thank you very much Moses that was terrific. It strikes me that
here are some great consistencies between what Grace and Moses have said to us. They both talked about civic education,
they talked about independent electoral commissions, about freedom of the press, the right to information, the
basic concepts of empowerment, dialogue across party lines. They talked about the necessity for public contact.
I was amazed that both referred to the practice that we politicians in too many countries have of making hollow
promises of saying things that can never come true. It strikes me as we start this discussion, and I don't want
to influence it anymore than that, but they have identified three things that seem to stick out, transparency,
communications and independence as principles that guide us. So, that having been said for those that want to make
comments or questions, we may, it may be helpful if we start with elections and then move into the other institutions
of legislatures. If that is the will of the table, then I certainly entertain any comments or questions or comments
again, I encourage you to be brief and to be specific, to talk about some of the problems you have had, but some
of the solutions that you have found to the issues that our colleagues here have raised but others. I will try
and make sure that everybody gets a chance. From time to time I may ask you a question or I may ask somebody to
respond, or I may ask you to explain. So, please who would like to go first? Sir, please.
Speaker: In Bolivia we have established a democracy since 17 years and for this recovery of democracy we
have had the political parties that started emerging as tools that is added to the intellectual sectors existing
and thus we could pick the press as well as the workers. However, once democracy was established all of these political
sectors, intellectual sectors, laborers, etc. that were united facing one of the dictatorships or the military
shift in the exercise of democracy what emerged, or the differences we started feeling and this has led to an atomization
if we can call it as such of political forces at present in my country and of course after this reduction we have
got now 17 political parties with a judicial personalities that are very well famous in my country. This is very
obvious because between one and another there isn't much difference in the logic at least so obviously we have
political parties that could be qualified as leftist parties that is due or even others and we have other political
parties that are more to the right. However we have something else, the leftist parties are divided. We have five
or six parties from the left and this is due to the personal interest. There is really no nuance in their ideology.
What we want to say is that the political parties that were the tools for the corporation, democracy corporation,
unfortunately for the time being they are among the main factors of a weakening of democracy and losing its prestige
because they show that obviously they are the fruit of this democracy. Here we could say that the prestige lies.
Actually in 1979 and until 1982 these were the last three years of the military dictatorships of confusion and
chaos, anarchy in my country. We had three presidents of the Republic, thus when democracy became established the
people were expecting more from democracy. As the representative from Namibia was saying so we had to feel a concrete
democracy, we wanted a democracy that could be translated more practically in standards of living and also it was
a majority. Obviously we have for example freedom of press as well as an overweighing role, the role of the press
for instance had an outstanding role in order to contribute to raise the awareness in order to recuperate democracy
so in democracy this role is overweighing in condemning and denunciating corruption and all the ills. This is shared
by all the countries even in the most advanced and developed countries.
Nonetheless the difference existing between several political parties that is in terms of ideology led to political
fight, a political struggle in Bolivia and this has been experienced also in several countries, it was very sharp
that is in a country when we have 8 million people with a capital of one million inhabitants so we don't have a
big population, so we know more or less the political parties, all the political leaders, all the personalities,
we can identify them. That what occurs is that the people know that one political leader with a very modest economy
before getting to power and this person is usually among the influential people economically so that is within
one or two years, thus people know that how much this person is earning and what the political power he or she
can acquire. This situation has led to corruption. The denunciation has led to the fact that this has led to concrete
results. In other words the political leader for instance has done so much, has negotiated so much etc. so from
one to the other the denunciation was not accessed to the public actually because some of them were protected and
the press that is becoming more diverse, it is analyzing things and it is depicting cases of corruption. This has
led to the fact that not always the relations existing between the government and the press is easy. However we
have a freedom of press in this situation and in the previous situation also that is characterized as I describe
it.
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