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Topic Discussion III
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 1
(6 of 16 pages)
Therefore, the freedom of each of these components and the way they organize themselves
in trade unions or association, is very important. Here we have to be aware of two major evils in the feeling of
pluralism. The first one be disguised elimination of pluralism, which means controlled pluralism in fact. By legal
prohibition of the freedom of expression and also trying to raise obstacles in the field of the freedom of expression
of political opinions. Especially with those views which are not well accepted by the State. And in my view, the
mentioned the policy have one characteristic that is that they reject violence as a method of work and that they
all accept the idea of dialogue and these new democracies and emerging democracies, should not give licenses to
parties, but they should give parties the freedom to organize and to carry out their activities. Also an independent
judiciary system in very important in this respect.
Sometimes there is some kind of artificial pluralism because sometime we have countries, which have 120 parties,
or 50 parties. In Morocco we have 16 or 17, I think there are too much. Sometimes such multiplicity of parties
is not a reflection of the true political situation in the country. That's why we call this artificial pluralism.
Sometimes the traditional parties which have their historical development, are in fact being overdrawn by these
new blocks or new groupings, which are artificially made in order to, sometimes we call these administrative parties
and sometimes the governments encourage divisions in the traditional parties, or the measure parties and therefore
we have these split groups which are in fact being controlled by the government and they deter the original parties
from playing their original role.
And in fact by having so many parties we are diluting political life in our countries and this in fact is not effective
pluralism. And as I said, we reject both controlled pluralism and [inaudible] deficient pluralism in both cases
they in fact prohibit certain social strata from expressing themselves, and therefore they have to resort to other
methods of expression, which may be violent. And as I said before, pluralism is not the only evidence of democracy.
And they can not be a criteria for judging a certain system as democratic or not democratic. As I said, there should
be effective pluralism. And in turn, democracy inside the quality is very important because no trade union or party
or organization cannot in fact participate in building democracy if they do not apply democracy in their internal
affairs.
Regarding the civil society and emerging democracies, I think that the main role, which can be played by the civil
society in emerging democracies, is that of the count authority. That is, these are organizations which are independent
from the State and which have no ambition to have access to government and therefore they do not have any vested
interests politically. In Morocco, we think that the civil society movement is in fact brought about by political
activists and sometimes the actions of the civil society may interact with the actions of politicians. And we feel
that some of these movements are independent of political activists because they try in fact to recruit non partisans
as members of these associations, and I think that these independent players are more effective in civil society
because they organize and coordinate their activity between different societies and associations, and the national
organizations and institutions are also members of international NGO associations and unions. And they exchange
their experience and views that they coordinate their positions.
Nevertheless, when we discuss the role of a civil society, we have to focus on certain points. We should pay attention
to attempts by politicians or the State to woo the civil society, in fact to have them on their side and like these
civil society institutions will become only bodies or institutions for applying the policies of the State. In fact
the main players may have a role to play in the civil society and another role to play in political organizations.
There should be clear distinctions between para partisan organizations and civil society institutions.
In fact governments have to deal with civil society institutions equally without favoring certain institutions
to the discredit of others. Regarding I have another point to say about women. Do you allow me to continue sir
or should I stop here?
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