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Topic Discussion I
Politics of Hard Choices
Political Transition and Economic Restructuring
Room 1
(18 of 20 pages)
The other point is that Yemen, as a developing country, has witnessed long years
of backwardness when the state has shouldered the burden of advancement. Failure of the state did not lead to the
fact that the private sector should effect balance development, which led to very -- the undermining all the services
with the 70 percent illiteracy rate and the cause for illiteracy is well known to all of us, and also the states
relinquishing from its role, and also the poor had to shoulder the burden of education themselves. This created
new impediments to democracy. In my views, there should be a balance between democracy and development. The country
has to take up its responsibility, as adopting such recipes, foreign receipts, would create so many obstacles as
conditions are different from one country to another. However, our democracy also faces other social and cultural,
political impediments, including the fact that the party which ruled in the totalitarian era is still ruling now
in the democratic era. Now, I can say that parties are not that effective. I belong to an opposing party, we have
20 parties in Yemen, there are some groupings of the opposing parties as the ruling parties still possessing the
totalitarian tools, such as the civil service management administration. I think we have to debate this point later
if this is possible and to see how can we really prepare the totalitarian parties to rule differently. I thank
you very much, Madam Chairperson.
Margaret de Boer: Well, yes, I'm terribly sorry, but I said just now that we have to finish this --pardon?
Speaker: Just a question to you.
Margaret de Boer: A question to me? Okay, well.
Speaker: Excuse me, Mrs. President, but I would like to know if it is possible for tomorrow to have a Spanish
translation because I know some French and some English, but I don't know it enough to explain everything about
all our experience, that's all. Thank you very much.
Margaret de Boer: I'll put this question on the table of the organization. That's the most easy way to handle
these problems, isn't it? But I also was disappointed that there is not a Dutch translator. I thank you all very
much for your contribution to the discussion and we are all very well aware, and I agree with my Yemen friend,
that it is -- well, we discussed some aspects, but we were not able to find that stone of wisdom, how to cope with
the difficult question of democracy and at the same time change your economic system where you put hardship on
the people, where the people want to have more prosperity. That is the main question and what you get is you cued
on that problem from diverse angles and that made it very, very interesting. Now, Chris Holman tried to make a
very brief summary of all the things you said just now, and he will give these highlights of the discussions now
to you, he will present them to you. Don't think that everything you said is already in these points because we
make a full report of this discussion to the organization, but these are the highlights. Chris, you have the floor.
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