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Topic Discussion I
Politics of Hard Choices
Political Transition and Economic Restructuring
Room 1
(8 of 20 pages)
Now, I have talked about the problems that we have had in doing this and I do
not want a situation whereby doing this you have conferences today, conferences tomorrow, workshop next time, evaluation
missions, project preparation programs, they take our directors and other senior staff from office and it creates
problems.
Now, those things will have to be taken into account when one is considering a recipe for their reforms in the
political arena and I think I will leave it at this point and then as we go on, if it's necessary, I can comment.
Thank you.
Margaret de Boer: Thank you very much. You gave us a very nice overview of all the difficult things you
are facing and you already faced. I think that Mr. Naciri of Morocco wants to go into this matter and then afterwards
I'll give the floor to Mrs. Haout (ph) of Morocco. Mr. Naciri.
Khalid Naciri: Thank you, Madam Chairman. I would like to make an intervention very briefly by asking two
questions to our colleagues from Benin and by making a quick observation, which seems to me sufficiently deep that
draws our attention in such a way that is somehow general.
First of all the questions. They are very much accurate. Benin has experienced a two-decade unique party system
to an experience of multi-partyism. If I have well heard there are around 15 political parties, how many exactly?
120, fine. So already with 15 it was problematic somehow, with 120 this draws our attention for the need to rationality.
My question is very simple, what's the meaning of the multi-party system as of the moment where you have made the
strategic choice to start up a policy of openness and democratization? Isn't it normal that an effort should be
made in that regard so that the political parties play their role, which is to frame society and to structure it
rather than multiplying endlessly because we have a tendency in the developing countries to consider that the multi-party
system, which is usually a tool for democracy, the tendencies in our countries is rather to consider that the multi-party
system is an end in itself? I'm speaking of slow-down multi-party system, I believe that there is an effort for
rationalization to be played on this level. Well, I would like to hear your view on this.
My second question always for Benin and it doesn't concern any Benin. You've had a Marxist, Leninist regime, I
put it between quotations, that was for around 20 years. Were they the same people ruling the country after having
changed ideas or did you have like new political families, a new political class? In other words, was there like
an alternation in politics? It seems to me that the question is quite relevant because in the former Soviet countries
many of the rulers of the communist party of the former Soviet Union remained in power with a new vision. Was that
the same case in your country or was it a new approach undertaken by new people, by new faces?
As to my observations, I think that by committing to very complex choices that we call concisely the policy of
difficult choices, the presentations of the representatives of Nepal and Benin were very significant. Sometimes
we could see dilemmas and sometimes we could see dramatic situations due to the purveys effects that we face inevitably
that had to do with the way of managing very complex and very difficult changes. So I believe that we can reach
an observation of a general side being that these difficult choices will definitely face inertia or even hostility,
that is inevitable because the purveys effects are huge and we all know that. I believe that everywhere we can
reach the same conclusion, if the effort is not achieved in order to involve the administrative technostructure,
it is always here, even if you new teams that are in office, even if you have a new adoption of practices, the
administrative technostructure doesn't vary and it may have accumulated one way of see things, one way of living,
one of behaving that is not always conform to the new vision and consequently, it could be like a tool for slowing
down the whole process and it can be serious, so this is the first effort to be made on this level. The second
effort shows us that it may not be very much played so far, such an effort, at least as far as my country is concerned
we are conscientious about this, I'm not saying that we have solved this problem, however we are trying to contribute
with adequate responses, they are difficult of course, but they are inevitable at the same time. So this involves
the popular participation, so to have the popular adherence to the change in such a way that the change is not
seen as something imposed by those who think, but makes it in such a way that the reflection stems, first of all
from the population itself so that this population feels like it is sharing in the transformation process. Thank
you, I finished my intervention.
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