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World Movement for Democracy |
Opening Session
Steering Committee member (Nigeria) and Chair, Ms. Ayo Obe welcomed the participants to the Fourth Assembly in Istanbul. A practicing lawyer in Nigeria since 1979, Ms. Obe is currently working with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) in Abuja on its Elections Program as Nigeria holds its third post-transition elections in April 2007. Previously, Ms. Obe served as president of the Civil Liberties Organisation of Nigeria.
Can Paker has served as a Board Member of the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) since its establishment as a foundation in 1994, and more recently as Chairman since 1997. He is a member of the World Movement Steering Committee and serves as treasurer. TESEV served as a local partner organization on the Fourth Assembly.
Excerpts:
Today we come from some 120 countries, and I think this is a very exciting opportunity and a very important symbol for our belief in the future of democracy. . . . Having attended the last Assembly in South Africa, I can tell you that we are part of a vitally important network of activists around the world who are working for the good of democracy. In spite of all the threats and dangers they are faced with, these people fight to extend democracy to their peoples and they are often not given credit for all the hard work that they do. You don't find their names in newspapers; you don't see them on TV screens; but nevertheless, they play a very important role, and they are all heroes as far as we are concerned. . . .
We are very excited that this Fourth Assembly is being held in Turkey, and I hope you will agree at the end of the Assembly that it was very meaningful to hold it in Istanbul. I think one of the biggest factors in choosing Istanbul is that our country has taken some very important steps towards strengthening democracy in the last few years, and we would therefore like to draw the world's attention to Turkey and to Turkey's efforts in this respect. . . . And of course there are some very important lessons we have learned, and there are also some very good practices that we have shared around the world. I hope that we will have an opportunity to discuss them at length in the sessions to come.
Murat Belge is a well known Turkish intellectual and civil rights activist. He is chairman of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly, Turkey (hCa), a local partner organization on the Fourth Assembly.
Excerpts:
Good afternoon, friends, and a hearty welcome to you to be here in Istanbul, my beloved city. I'm especially happy to be on the welcoming side here today, because I'm not merely a host, but have participated in World Movement for Democracy assemblies since the first one in New Delhi. So I consider myself a veteran of this network.
These three words–world, movement, democracy– when I hear them, I know I should participate in whatever event brings them together. And now we have the fourth such event, this time in Istanbul. . . . For civil society to really exist, international solidarity is essential and should never be neglected. . .
These meetings are important for two things: One is the exchange of information. So we should have more exchanges, bringing us together from all continents of the world so that we can understand and discuss each other's problems. But to discuss the problems is not enough; we should also take inspiration from each other. . . . And maybe we can manage to take a creative look at what has been tried and done and achieved elsewhere. . . . The second general area, which is perhaps even more important, is the level of international solidarity. So I hope this meeting will be a profitable one, a useful one, vis-á-vis these aims, and once again I welcome you warmly to Istanbul.
Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan is Prime Minister of Turkey. Educated at a religious Imam Hatip school, Mr. Erdoǧan graduated from Marmara University's faculty of economics and business. After local elections in March 1994, he became Mayor of Istanbul as his Welfare Party became Turkey's largest party for the first time. Imprisoned in 1998 after reciting a poem deemed incendiary by the authorities, Mr. Erdoǧan, upon his release, led the split of the "renewalist" or moderate majority of Turkey's Islamist movement. Under his leadership, the new Justice and Development Party won an overall majority in the 2002 parliamentary elections.
Excerpts:
Distinguished guests, and those of you who have come together in this city to think about new ways of strengthening democracy, I would like to say that I'm very happy to be with you all, and I would like to convey my best wishes to all of you. . . .
We are currently living the days that were predicted by Marshall McLuhan, who was the first person to suggest the term global village. When McLuhan declared that the world was becoming a global village, communication satellites had only recently been sent into space . . . . And this new cultural revolution, which started with communication satellites, has reached its summit thanks to the Internet and the digital revolution today. . . . Unfortunately, humanity has failed to respond to the changes brought about by this cultural revolution in a timely and adequate manner. Many societies were ill prepared and were thrown off guard, . . . but of course at this juncture the most basic and burning question is what should be the basis for the new global village?
Ladies and gentlemen, in my view, the most important aspect of meetings such as this is creating a common platform for discussion . . . and I think we have to find ourselves working towards the same common values. And can democracy, justice, and pluralism be the values that will establish this common platform? Of course, you will be discussing this question for three days, and I believe that you will very positively contribute to this discussion by proposing your very valuable ideas. . . .
We believe that Turkey has an important role to play, and that is why we have worked very hard to move towards achieving the Copenhagen criteria, and this is why we have worked very hard to achieve objectives in such a short period of time. And of course freedom was at the top of our agenda. We have done much to achieve freedom of expression, freedom of faith, and freedom of association. Of course, you can always ask whether what we have done has been sufficient.
We have harmonized many of our laws, but of course there are some habits and traditions, some prejudices, that we also have to overhaul, and we have to also start seeing the application of these principles. . . . We believe that today we need a culture of tolerance and reconciliation, because . . . we would like to preserve our differences, but we also have to find a way of cohabitation. . . . We would like to create unity and plurality, and in order for this principle to be realized no faith or culture should be deemed the "other," and no culture or faith should be looked down upon. . . .
NGOs and opinion leaders have very important roles to play here. As Goethe said, the best governments are those that teach us how to rule ourselves, and the most important role of government in an open society and in a democracy is to open the way to civil society.
Anwar Ibrahim is the former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia and one of the world's leading Muslim democrats. Detained without trial for 18 months in 1974 following student protests, he was elected to the Malaysian parliament in 1982. In 1987 he was elected Vice-President of United Malays National Organization, the ruling coalition's principal party. In 1993 he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister while continuing to serve as Finance Minister. Sacked from the government in 1998 and imprisoned on trumpedup charges, he was acquitted in September, 2004.
Excerpts:
Democracy is about giving dignity to the human spirit founded on the adoption of natural rights, because all individuals are endowed by the Creator with the rights to life, liberty, and estate. Essential to this process is a profound commitment to the protection of the minority, to the rule of justice, so that these natural rights shall not be taken away from the people. But yet there are those who say that democracy is largely a western construct, molded from the historical circumstances of the West. They say that liberal democracy is inherently incompatible with Asian values. . . . They say that before the supremacy of the state and the well being of its citizens, there is no place for individual liberty. . . . Similar arguments are being made about democracy and Islam. We hear the view that democracy and Islam are diametrically opposed because liberal democracy places sovereignty in the hands of the individual, while in Islam it belongs only to God. They mention that freedom, for example, is an alien concept. On the contrary, however, within Islam freedom is a fundamental objective of divine law. In fact, not just freedom but the crucial elements of constitutional democracy and society are moral imperatives in Islam–freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, the sanctity of life, etc. . . .
Though elections are essential in that the authority of the government derives from the consent of the people, the question is whether the mere phenomenon of elections means that democracy is alive and well, or are there still other fundamental issues to be resolved? Where I come from, the opposition is barred from the air waves, rallies are not allowed, and the opposition newspapers operate underground. If democracy means participation in government in its fullest sense, then the existence of a vibrant opposition is essential as the bulwark against the tyranny of absolute power. . . .
To my mind, if a modern democratic Muslim state purports to set limits on the authority of the state in deference to the rights of the individual, then it is wholly in line with the requirements of constitutional democracy. Seven years ago, Indonesia plunged headlong into democracy after more than 30 years of oppression and dictatorship. As the largest Muslim nation in the world, it stands out as the single most significant political phenomenon in the recent history of democracy. The press there is free, and the fairness in the conduct of elections is unsurpassed. . . . The people may gather to protest decisions and policy without fear of reprisal. Still, efforts to deepen democracy must be continued relentlessly. Economic progress must remain high on the list of priorities, and with a concomitant program for social justice. Fighting corruption must continue to be pursued with full conviction.
Fellow democrats, these are not merely theoretical constructs. This is about honor, dignity, and human survival. Every day that passes without change means another bleak night for a political prisoner languishing in solitude, another death from hunger, destitution, and disease as a result of neglect and deprivation and another opportunity for the corrupt to abscond millions from the state coffers. For us this is not a luxury of intellectual discourse. . . . It is our fervent hope that democratic forces throughout the world will continue to assert their will and build a strong foundation of universal support to move the agenda forward.
Kim Campbell is Secretary-General of the Club of Madrid. She became the first female prime minister of Canada in 1993, as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Her previous political appointments included Minister of State for Indian Affairs and Northern Development; Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada; as well as Minister of National Defense and Minister of Veterans' Affairs. Campbell finished a two-year term as president of the International Women's Forum in 2005.
Excerpts:
It is an honor for me to be here and somewhat daunting in a way, because I held elective office at all three levels of government in Canada–local, provincial, and national. In the course of my political career, I have been yelled at; I have confronted demonstrators; I've had mean things said about me in the press; and I never got a chance to answer, and as a woman I often felt my biggest battle was establishing my right to be there at all. But I never got thrown into jail, and I never worried that I would not put my head on my own pillow at night and sleep in the safety of my own bed in my own home in my own community. But there are many of you here who fight for the same things that were my passion in public life, but you do so under much more difficult circumstances. Many of you have seen the inside of a jail cell, and many of you know the price that has to be paid to create democracy. . . .
Sometimes people argue that we shouldn't be in a hurry in countries that aren't democratic. After all, if you look at the system that Canada has, it probably got its start in the year 1215, when King John of England met with the barons at Runnymede and signed an agreement limiting his power. That was the Magna Carta. . . . So you could ask yourself, what's the hurry? Why are we rushing other countries? Shouldn't we allow other countries maybe not to take 702 years, but to take a little bit longer? Well, I think we all would agree that the answer to that is no, because it is a different world, and we have all changed. . . .
Many of the new democracies come not just from slowly evolving societies, but from seriously authoritarian or totalitarian rule, and those kinds of government not only do not foster the skills needed for democracy, but actively discourage them. . . . And so the challenge that many countries face today, even when there is a decision in a country's leadership that favors democracy, is in developing the skills and the techniques that can make democracy work, and this is why it is so important when people have great expectations and then those expectations are not met, and the sad thing is that it is often democracy that is discredited, not simply the incapacity of those who are there to do all that is needed. . . .
So I think it is important for all of us who care about democracy to push back against those who say that democracy promotion and those who support it are in some way the carriers of a negative agenda, are trying to undermine governments, or are in some way engaged in subversive or nefarious activities. On the contrary, we are simply trying to share what we know about how to translate the dream of democracy into the nuts-and-bolts organizational and technical capacity that keeps that dream alive, as opposed to the disappointment and disillusionment that failure creates when government structures simply cannot meet that challenge.
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