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Topic Discussion I
Politics of Hard Choices
Political Transition and Economic Restructuring
Room 1
(16 of 20 pages)
Margaret de Boer: Thank you very much. Now, we've got three persons and
I think that it is wise to start now with the United States because I don't want to finish the discussions with
the United States, I want to finish the discussion with some of the developing countries. So I give the floor first
to our friend from the United States, then I go Ghana and then the last word is for Yemen.
John Duke Anthony: Thank you. I appreciate your sense of humor and the United States tries to have the last
word on too many debates and it doesn't deserve to have the last word on this particular debate.
But in the question that the lady from Isla asked earlier about can you have democracy if the voters or the participants
are not educated? One can debate that until the cows come home, so they say, but in this particular country, in
the elections in 1993 and '97 for which I was a participant observer, the fact that you began from the beginning
without regard to literacy in terms of education levels as there would be in other societies, and that were women
were allowed the right to vote from the very beginning, even though their levels of literacy were far higher, 80
percent perhaps in some areas, 65 percent in the men, was seen by the observers as an altogether healthy phenomenon.
And the sheer participation, the numbers, and the quality of the participation was its own educative process there
and we have the phrase that democracy is not a spectator sport, if you want results you have to participate, if
you don't participate you have yourself to blame. And so through the very participation process that has gone on
twice here, there has been an education, quite apart from the schools, but the real life education and it's been
noticed in other neighboring states, Kuwait in particular and Oman in particular. I don't think that they would
have gone as quickly as they have in that direction had it not been done here with a far less illiterate population,
nor would there have been women into the Yemen parliament had the women not participated and been elected by women
and men, which is quite unusual in the Arabian peninsula.
The last one point is on the political transition taking place in the countries neighboring here, having gone through
all of the heads of state summits of the GCC countries. In 1989, Sultan Caboose (ph) was the host and he put on
the agenda this kind of question that you're debating here and the others said it was premature and it was irrelevant,
but he used as a frame of reference what was happening in central and eastern Europe, and the others said we are
so fundamentally different that you can't be serious, and he said, no, I am serious, we are not that unique. So
they said if you are that serious we appoint you the chairman of a committee to examine it and report back in a
year. He appointed Kuwait and Berin and they went all over the world to emerging democracies, established democracies,
and those in between, and came back and said, because by that time the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait had occurred, that
we have no choice but to begin to politically transition to a new system than we have. Otherwise, we have these
gaps between rules and rules, governors and governors, sovereigns and subjects here, which Iran can play with and
Iraq can play with, and they have both played with.
So that's a frame of reference as to what's going on next door, they don't call themselves emerging democracies,
in fact except for Kuwait they avoid the word "D" and they avoid the word "P" in political,
but they use other inventive words that are in the same direction, increasing the level of popular participation
in the national development process. It's a nice ring to it and it's got a lot of forward momentum to it and it's
in that particular direction, so the effect is happening there as a result of what's happening in societies less
fortunate on the economic front.
Margaret de Boer: Thank you very much. Well, Mr. Adjei from Ghana, what is your reaction to this intervention?
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