Crack in the monolith PDF Print E-mail
Monday, 23 June 2008 00:00
It took Palestinian NGO's more than ten years of 'discussions and familiarization' to dispel misconceptions, overcome suspicions, and stew a code of conduct palatable enough to all of them to be viewed as a strength and not as a threat.  How long would it take NGO's of all Arab countries to serve a similar first course?  The length of the Palestinian period could provide a premonitory feel of a more daunting question:  How long it would take a "background paper setting the main ideas of a Charter for Democratic Practices for political parties in the Arab region," to see the light.

An "Expert Meeting" organized by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation on 23-24 June in Beirut gathered fifteen participants from Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, with the aim of identifying what is missing in the existing codes of conduct for NGO's in the Arab World and how to adapt the existing material to the needs of the different countries.   In tandem, a parallel workshop set out to tackle the thornier issue of reaching consensus on a charter for democratic practices.

The Palestinian lesson was highlighted as a model.  After "a kind of consensus" was reached on the importance of such a code, a drafting committee was formed with the mandate of coming up with a final code of conduct containing the most important principles that would guarantee good governance in the NGO's administrative and financial matters.  The Civil Society Commission of the Arab League, who attended the event, pledged to promote the upcoming code on the Arab level; partner organizations committed to promote it on there websites and hold awareness raising discussions around its principles.

A background paper on the essentials of a Charter for Democratic Practices prepared by Dr Jamal Barout, and Dr Azmi Shuaibi, was the focus of heated discussions though, and maybe because, the mechanics of the arguments were not of the first choice.  Unsurprisingly, "minimum agreements" were reached on the principles to be included in the Charter.  Getting the representatives of many antagonistic political trends to sit and talk together on such an issue revealed the need for critically reviewing the experiences and rhetoric of Arab political parties.  Another draft of the Charter should be in the offing in Amman, in the not distant future.
 

Regardless of whether or not the participants were aware of it, regardless of the modest results, much of the differences felt in the thick of the debates may be viewed as good exercises in "consensus-building" from the Übung-macht-den-Meister vantage point of an external, more specifically Western, catalyst.  More exercise might give more of the same, but the thing is that a lot of resolve, beside the Übung is required from the local participants to bring about a crack in the monolithic culture of holier-than-thou Exclusivism.
 

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