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Topic Discussion III
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 3
(4 of 16 pages)
From October 1996 to August of 1997, thanks to the NDI, we set up a group to support
women. Perhaps you'll smile at that, but the work of this group was to organize concerts, with musicians, and draw
the maximum of women to these concerts, after finishing their work in the kitchen and their other work, to satisfy
their needs in listening to this music. So we would tell them to please keep quiet; the objective of the meeting
is to provide recreation and to remind you that next April we will have the presidential elections, the legislative
and the municipal ones and no-one can safeguard your interests more than yourselves. So with the help of NDI we're
here to invite you to come out and describe yourselves on the electoral lists and then to have your election cards
and then to become candidates of these parties and above all they are voting to go out massively and to carry out
the responsibilities which will meet with your expectations. We tell them that to vote is the opportunity for showing
their great capacities for mobilization which represents a force of dissuasion for the politicians who will feel
like ignoring their problems and a force for persuasion for those to wish to help them.
This campaign did have its impact, but unfortunately it was limited by other problems, the opposition this time
and following the crisis to the boycott, our activities were made very difficult in those quarters where the opposition
was master, because to go to the quarters and districts and invite the women to vote massively, the opposition
called for a boycott and this made our job very difficult. We hope that we will be able to re-start this experience
in a context of peace and political conciliation.
Since October 1998 and thanks to the government via the assistance of US aid, we are carrying out a training program
for women to exercise their civic and political rights in decentralized operations. We have trainers in communities
and in turn they will work on these ideas within their own communities and their own districts.
The third part of our expose, consists of pluralism and democratic decision-making. Pluralism allows the expression
of all ideas and currents of ideas and allows the receivers to receive all useful information to offer the most
choice. It's not a question of pluralism or multi-partyism but pluralism in all domains like trade unions and NGOs.
As to the strategies which have been suggested in purely ethnic and purely religious ones, the laws should back
formally the re-grouping, political and associative, with religious ones and mono-ethnical ones and even regional
ones. The associations and parties must be systematically open to all, whatever the religion, ethnic grouping or
other origin. We have to fight extremism and intolerance and include this principle in the programs of civic education.
We have to balance the management between the various ethnic groups and religions which exist within these associations
and these political parties. As far as the anxieties are concerned with the great liberties granted to citizens,
I said earlier that it was a question of helping citizens and to sensitize them.
To conclude, I would like to suggest to this forum to set up an international committee to monitor and follow up
the resolutions of our forum. This committee will have national sections and sectoral sub-committees and this committee
will have to consider in depth all the problems raised at this forum.
I thank you for your attention.
Chair: Thank you very much. I would like now to introduce Mr. Manfredo Maraquin from Guatemala. He's a political
scientist and he is Director of Citizen Action, which is a two-year old organization that monitors legislation
and promotes transparency and focuses on citizen participation. I give you the floor.
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