World Forum on Democracy

Raul Alfonsin

LATIN AMERICAN HUMBLE CONTRIBUTION FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF DEMOCRACY IN EAST EUROPE

TIME OF CHANGE

A time of change is a time of crisis, where certain beliefs are subject to an analysis and certain projects and objectives must be necessarily redefined.

When President Woodrow Wilson was visiting his country procuring support for the Society of Nations initiative, he affirmed that if the United States did not take the lead to make it possible, the world would experience one of those great disappointments, one of those years of a bitter absence of reaction which would end in universal cynicism."

This was what happened and totalitarianism and war appeared as a consequence of discouragement and cynicism.

Should peoples see now that changes did not make freedom and dignity greater but encouraged avarice and created unfairness, once again the world would be shaken with pain and blood.

THE STATE
A State is not only a government system: it involves the whole institutional field, that is, the institutions that form it and have faculties to adopt its own decisions, principally or indirectly, and the governed community, because power and society are indissoluble. This does not mean that the ethnic conception State-Nation does not exist.

Historically, the acceptance of the State constitutes a generalized consensus.

Unquestionably, there were warnings as regards the State being dominated by bureaucracy, the need to strengthen the Parliament as the only way to achieve its control and the need to avoid that the bourgeoisie class being able to culturally and economically assimilate all society, thus distorting the role of the State in order to justify and maintain its control by the acceptance of its thesis by some subordinated groups.

Nowadays, it seems that the usubordinated groups" are facing a new process where the controlling group is no longer concerned by the obtention of certain balances which made its hegemony tolerable but is trying to obtain, under the neoconservative thesis, the weakening of the State in order to transform it into the manager of its own interests and while accepting non-compliance of its essential duties.

Besides, globalization has generalized this attitude of the dominant classes, magnified by an intolerable manipulation.

GOVERNANCE
Another issue that is of similar interest, is governance.
For the neoconservative thought, a system becomes ungovernable when it has to face a great deal of demands. It has been shown through the search of participation and equal opportunities, two clear elements of democracy according to our concept. On the contrary, for progressive sectors, governance is linked to the real possibility of defining their programs giving priority to ethics and politics over the economy, and at the same time be able to make freedom and equality possible.

ECONOMY
Although it is true that adopting the market as a primary mechanism for the distribution of goods and services is not against the essence of democracy, since other mechanisms exist to promote the different economic systems compatible with democracy, I think that in societies such as ours it is difficult for collective welfare and social justice to improve without the market having an important role in the generation and distribution of goods and services.

I also think that the market requires rules in order to avoid deformations such as monopolies and oligopolies, and that the State should not abandon its redistribution role, because the market increases the gap between the rich and the poor; neither can the State give up its task for development because the market does not always define the appropriate strategies.

With respect to housing and schooling, pensions and unemployment insurance, a modern health system and family social services must not be a relatively late fruit of democracy but a condition for its consolidation and survival.

As to external problems, we do not need to go back on the difficulties linked to the foreign debt, the trade balance and payment deficit.

Globalization, particularly in the developing countries, produces more threats than opportunities to economic and social growth. Actually the problem is how to deal with this challenge. It generates cumulative processes of wealth and income concentration making external vulnerability and macroeconomics imbalance more severe.

TOWARDS THE DEMOCRACY OF THE FUTURE
Neoliberalism dared say that democracy is not a fundamental value. We state that what we need is more democracy.
The exercise of democracy should go beyond the most restricted levels of governmental decisions to reach those of everyday life in a common search for solidarity, rationality, and creativity to be able to solve the urgent needs we are facing. Decisions should be the result of participation coming from the lowest levels to the most complex ones through an uninterrupted chain of discussion and control by citizens.

Thus the society of participation will not be anarchic or chaotic. On the contrary it is the only functional and organized society, the only one truly compatible with preserving the basic values established by democracy and the only one avoiding the risks of ungovernableness.

HUMAN RIGHTS
I come from a country where violations to human rights were to be punished more harshly than in any other country in the whole of history.

But the differences I find between our reality and that of the East Europe countries lead me to voice some thoughts that could be interesting.

Those who criticize the initiative to limit the trial and eventual sentence to those responsible of human rights violations adopt an absolute concept of retribution in punishment, considering it a moral duty to punish every crime, otherwise, the injustice is such that any other social benefit will not compensate for it.

To those of us who, on the contrary, affirm that this concept of punishment is rationaly hard to justify and made compatible with the principles of social morality, the practices of punishment are morally justified provided that they are efficient to protect society from a greater evil.

We wish to note that in a democracy of solidarity, a set of social rights must exist, for which all citizens are obliged to struggle, making no difference as to what sector they belong.

EDUCATION
Everybody recognises the fact that education has a central role to play in constructing a democratic and modern society in solidarity.

It is mainly through education that a democratic culture is developed. And then, men and women will be ready to find answers to those growing challenges resulting from the changing and more complex systems of production.

Instead of inducing ideas, teaching should be centred on discussion of ideas, to progress from uniformity to creativity, from dogma to rational analysis. Even though the teaching task is wide and all embracing, the mission of the teacher should not be mixed up with transmitting a doctrine since education is not taming, nor cultural slavery.

SOCIETY
In order to achieve our challenge we need to build a different society.

In this new society, each person must feel he/she has the power of opinion, the power of decision and the power of construction. Not only feel it but also be in condition to exercise that power.

This means changing the old closed-door policy into the new policy in direct contact with the peoples' requirements and proposals. Politics should be able to break the barrier of coldness, distance and mistrust, that still exists.

The new society will consolidate a will for integration and the solidarity expressed in cooperation and an often attitude to change and development, in contrast
to the aggressive behavior and the selfish individualism which blocks society and eliminates its initiative.

To reach the consolidation of this integrated society means that in each of our countries we should eliminate antagonisms of the past that separeted us and end the struggles that destroyed us. Substituting violence and intolerance with discussion and pluralism, excluding all wild struggles as a means to settle natural quarrels between different ideas and proposals having instead an open debate and the corresponding respect for the decision taken by the majority and for the rights of minorities, this is constitute the first commitment to make in order to reach our after common objectives.

The need exisits to avoid watertight compartments, that to a greater or lower extent are considered as the representation of the national whole. A democracy is not built in this way and not even a country, but a controversial juxtaposition country vs. anti-country, nation vs. anti-nation. As a political and territorial entity, the nation shall be built on the precarious clout of a group over the rest of the people and not on an articulation wished by everybody in a coexistence system.

Nothing shall be built with compartmentalized parties, compartmentalized labour union organizations, compartmentalized business associations, compartmentalized armed forces, culturally divided units that only on certain ocassions created greater partnerships, but never in global coexistence schemes.

A NEW COLLECTIVE WILL
This modernization must not be necessarily carried out according to the exclusive criteria of technical efficiency - even considering fundamental the technological dimension of modernization-; a process of modernization must begin in such a way that general welfare increases progressively, so that the whole of society may benefit.

A modernization purely and exclusively thought and practiced in order to reduce costs, protect competitiveness and increase profits is a precarious conception and socially unfair, because it puts aside the consequences that the introduced changes shall have as regards the welfare of workers and of society.

I think that for Latin America as well as for Eastern Europe, modernisation implies integration and participation of all the people. No stable society is built up without solidarity, being our first duty imposed by the ethics of solidarity to incorporate to a community, all those who, without denying their history, feel called to work in a project such as the one we have defined.

The age of absolute convictions of the last century, of Mesianism and easy historicism has ended in the world. Future is neither predetermined nor a blank sheet where we may draw following our absolute will. We have come from a past. Starting there we can rationally lead our future without giving up our heritage but without being its slaves. We recognize we have limits although there is not one single road ahead. Let us choose the road to freedom, to solidarity and let us work together to strengthen justice.
The age in which it was thought that the happiness of human beings would come after an absolute, violent, definite episode, in which a new life would have been inaugurated the next day, is over. This is not a revolution and it has never been so. Revolution is a label that historians have given through the ages to a long and complex process of transformation.

But the age of the small reforms, of the illusion that minimum corrections could change society has also ended. There is no need to talk about reform or revolution, a dated discussion. Let us place ourselves instead, on the correct road of rational and efficient transformation Our countries must vigorously emerge from their long standing crisis; this vigour will be fed with the participation of all members of society.

We have always known that the so called negative liberties, as they protect the citizen before the State, were not enough. The problem is that the protecting credit-liberties of social rights are not enough for many. Nowadays, as it has been underlined, we have to talk about the right to inclusion, and linking social rights to moral obligations.

Neoconservative criticism is focused on the assumed exaggerated democratisation, the citizens' participation, the search of equality and the State cost, its inefficiency, the growing of bureaucracy and its intervention in the private sector. It proposes a minimum State limited to protection against violence, theft and fraud considering it the only justification. A State having a neutral position between the different social interests in a society where political and economic inequalities are the rule. Who rejects it is anachronic and an enemy.

Let us raise our voice. We must not be afraid to be against a prevailing idea. We must not let to be culturally overcome. They must not defeat our resistance.