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Topic Discussion III
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 5
(2 of 22 pages)
Chair: When you speak, when you go to make a comment, when I recognize
you, perhaps you'll just introduce yourself and say where you're from. No need to make us suffer.
This is working session number three, where we're going to be looking at the issues of increasing participation
democratic societies, focusing specifically, but not solely on the participation of women. To get the discussion
going today we have three speakers and one of our speakers has asked if she could go third, so that others who
want to hear someone in another room could come and hear her, which is fair enough. We're also just waiting for
Sandra De Barraza. There you are. Welcome. So perhaps we'll start with Sandra De Barraza and then hear from Mr.
Shyley Kondowe and then from Raufa Hassan. Sandra, I wonder if you would like to just provide your own bio? I have
your bio here that you -- you have a degree in sociology, you've done a number of things in your country and you
work in a number of different areas. So perhaps the easiest thing is for you to explain who you are, what you do,
why you're here and in ten minutes or less give us some kick-off for our discussion here and welcome.
Sandra De Barraza: [Not available due to technical difficulties]
Chair: Thank you very much, Sandra. For those of you who have just come in, we're in the -- just the beginning
of our introductory comments. That was Sandra De Barraza from El Salvador. We actually have a good representation.
I'm going to turn now to Mr. Shyley Kondowe from Malawi, so we're going to hear from Central America, from Africa
and then from Yemen. So we've got a good geographical range. I just want to remind our speakers that less is more,
in the sense that as concise as we can be gives the opportunity for people to bounce off your discussions. Anyway,
I'm very happy to turn the floor over to Mr. Kondowe.
Shyley Kondowe: [Background not available due technical difficulties]
Malawi is seven years old in party democracy and my presentation will mostly take Malawi as a case study.
Participation and the democratic decision making, I take it as an element of freedom of expression and association.
I think that's the way of the benchmark of the democratic decision-making is based. And the fundamental issues
relating to this is the question of public opinion. The manner in which and the impact of popular participation
is related to the degree of acceptance by government of public opinion, how sensitive the government is to public
opinion. And also the stretch of information flow, whether information is one way or information is [inaudible]
traffic or there is no information at all.
The other element that I wanted also to examine is the level of tolerance between opposition and ruling party,
which will be reflected in the character of government and also the manner in which citizens are able to tolerate
itself, questions of attitude, the question of whether the society is aggressive or is dormant.
Finally, the level of compromise, because a society, one element or the opposition or the ruling party may hold
one of you and they are not able to compromise, meet half way. And this I find them as [inaudible] upon which democratic
decision making is influenced.
This goes to the question that I've been given and I'll also leave out the issues that my colleague has reflected
on. I would say that in most of emerging democracies, both governments are weak to respond to democratic behavior,
just as citizens also do not institutional structures where they can participate in decision making and influence
the process of policy making. And it is important that we move towards building an effective and increase the capacity
of both local and the national institutions, which can create -- which can bridge the gap to provide opportunity
for participation.
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