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Topic Discussion I
Politics of Hard Choices
Political Transition and Economic Restructuring
Room 2
(11 of 14 pages)
Abderhamane Niang: --- that most of the people intervene to talk about
the problems that the leaders face in trying to have the economic and social restructuring in the transitionary
period. We said that we have to have the means to push people to support the democratization process. This is the
problem which has not to do with the government alone, but it might have a different nature that we usually overlook,
we talk about human rights, we talk about freedom of press, but all this means just only one part of the population.
The city usually and -- rather the big cities usually benefit from those matters. For instance, we have lawyers
in the big cities, but when we go to the jungle, for instance, or to the rural areas, we still have local authorities
which don't pay attention to those democratic principles. So the question here is what has changed?
We are still in the framework of a dictatorship of one sort or the other and this system is practiced by the intellectuals
against the illiterate people in rural areas, for instance, poverty is increasing, in those rural areas the population
are always asking why don't we apply economic restructuring in our areas. So what are the solutions that we can
have to push those rural populations to be involved in the privatization process? The solution that we have thought
of Mali is decentralization. When we started the decentralization process, there was a phrase that we said that
now governors had returned home, that people now know that they do have the authority. So we have decentralization
in [inaudible] of decentralization, trying to transfer all authorities of all groups and we try to move from village
to the other and ask the people [inaudible] to which village they want to be affiliated with so that they can go
on with their work, so now we have 700 administrative area -- 701 administrative areas in my country and those
areas do feel that they are really involved in the democracy process and in the restructuring process. So if you
want to support the political circles in their hard choices, we have to start from the grass root level and we
have to involve the rural population in those democracy process by returning authority to them, not only through
lieu that would state decentralization, but by giving them in practice all necessary authorities so that they can
learn what is democracy in reality.
So to introduce democracy at the level of village and to teach those rural population how to administrate, how
to say to the central authority that all those debts that we are throwing away. Sorry for using the words. We don't
want how to use those debts or those loans and grants that we really wished do belong to us, to the real people.
Democracy at the level at the central level might lead the population to shun from democracy. Thank you, Mr. President.
Larry Diamond: Yes, please.
Speaker: I believe that all the 80 ideas we have put forward, so I'm trying to be very brief. I would like
to say, Mr. President, that -- Mr. Chairman, sorry, that half of our election process is not democratic in the
true meaning of the word. Most of the emerging democracies are not [inaudible] by transparency, 55 percent of the
voters are illiterate, poor women, who are subjected to external pressures, so they vote without really being convinced
of what they are doing. In fact, we are looking forward to having more legitimate authority so that we can have
more democracy and more accountability in terms of practicing democracy. You shouldn't think that women are not
smart, they are very smart, and they are just in need for transparency in the transfer of information because in
our last elections we had 55 parties who were on the one man card and all those were opposition parties.
The grants or the donations did not help us to push the democratic process forward. We should try to organize lobbies
or pressure groups, which would allow with the time for the transfer of information to farmers, to mobilize farmers
and to benefit the farmers from the democratic process. Our government has committed itself to guarantee the minimum
social level for each of us. And Mr. Chairman, I do believe that the problem is not a problem of the work of women
alone, women should work at the political level, as well.
I would like also to ask the Prime Minister of Namibia, how did they reach the presentation effect three percent
of women. In fact it's not a matter of a percentage of representation, but we should make sure that women are capable
of thinking and not only of imitating men, because most of men are -- should be there in the decision making circles
without really crossing through this conflict with men in power. We should exert more efforts in order to push
women to gain more education, not because it's for them to be intellectuals as myself, for instance, unfortunately,
but just to be acquainted with what's happening around her.
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