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Topic Discussion I
Politics of Hard Choices
Political Transition and Economic Restructuring
Room 5
(3 of 22 pages)
Dr. Julio Alaga: Good afternoon. I would like to raise one questions please
are you going to work as a team in order to produce concrete results with the complete idea or is it going to be
a matter of discussion of experiments of others in addition to what is going to be presented now.
Chair: I was remiss in not addressing that question. I would like actually to do both, after the presentations
I would like to spend maybe half of the remaining time sharing experiences of how each of your countries is facing
that dilemma, and then for the later half of the remaining time, to focus very concretely on proposals that could
be issued at the end of the conference in a report, in particular, how all of you are managing the politics of
the twin transition. Meaning, how are you building coalitions within your societies, political coalitions within
your democratic societies to enact what are necessary and very painful short term economic restructuring? So thank
you very much for that comment. Again the goal will be to produce, map, deprive from NDI as a rapidtour (ph) and
he will boil down our discussion into concrete recommendations a page or two for the final conference report.
Dr. Julio Alaga: Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Your Excellency, the Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen, as the moderator
has said, I am the Dean of the Political and Economic Science School of the University of Our Lady De La Paz. I
shall be taking in general about this topic before us and I shall deal with my topic very briefly. I was suppose
to have a written presentation but I have lost my bag and unfortunately I do not have my paper with me, so I have
written out some of the outline or guidelines that I will discuss orally.
The emergence of or emerging democracies have opened the path for exchange of expendments and views. As the President
of Yemen said this morning during the 1960's there were only 40 democracies over 50 years we have 127 democracies.
What we have noted is that the democratization of these 127 countries is limited to the democratic regimes or systems
rather than the content of the democracy. When we talk about freedom of press, freedom of association and separation
of the powers this is something that is taking place on the field. According to some of the studies that have been
undertaken by some researchers and here I am referring to what is taking place in our country, the civil rights
and the participation of women and the rights of the minorities have not yet become something very solid in many
countries. I would like to refer to some of the democratic mechanisms and specifically those that we adopt and
under which decisions are taken in Bolivia. I would like to say that in our country Bolivia has found the right
means of achieving that through the co-ordination of all efforts of the individuals. There was an acceptance of
the opinions and Lewis (ph) adopted democracy was not very clear at the outset. This of course is generalized or
can be generalized because we cannot think that democracy is different or has different shapes and different countries.
The livelihood of the people depends on democracy.
The second point that I would like to mention about democratization in Bolivia is economically form. In order to
improve the lives of the people or the economy, and in order to care for the needs of our elder, the cost of living
is very high in Bolivia and this is due to the fact that the means of development that are at the disposal of the
nations are quite limited and maybe even unfamiliar to our country, because of economy was centrally planned before
it shifted to free market economy.
The third step that we have taken in order to live democracy was legal development, legislative development as
well, which has enabled us to or has allowed the independence of the three powers, the independence of the legislature
from the executive. This is a topic that should be generalized in order to ensure democracy and decision making.
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