|
|
|
|
International Forum >> The Democracy Forum for East Asia>> "Civil Society, Political Parties, and the State:
Balancing Democratic Development in Asia"
|
|
|
Introduction
Session I: Relations between the State and Civil Society Session II: Relations Between Political Parties and Civil Society Session III: Domestic and International Linkages of Civil Society Session IV: Directions for Reform Agenda Participants |
Session II: Relations Between Political Parties and Civil Society Chair: Kie-Duck Park, Sejong Institute Foreign donors have become reluctant to work with political parties in recent years, Peter Manikas observed in brief opening remarks, because they fear being accused of interfering in the internal politics of their host countries. As a result, NGOs have received more financial support and training, and they have become much more sophisticated. At the same time there has been a blurring of the roles of political parties and NGOs. NGOs now monitor elections and place issues on the public agenda, for example. In many parts of the world, civil society associations grew out of opposition political movements. Many of these movements assumed some of the traditional roles of political parties, such as mobilizing voters and articulating positions on issues. "Thus, a key question has become: do civil society organizations pose a threat to political parties? I would guess they do," Mr. Manikas said. Civil society organizations may also pose a threat to government, he added. Many NGOs, particularly those with foreign funding, have employees who are better educated and better paid than those who work for governments. At the same time, political parties still engage the electorate in a way that NGOs do not. Political parties that win elections assume the responsibility of running government, which outside groups obviously never do. "And so it is a mistake to think civil society organizations can replace parties, even though many donors want to avoid political parties for fear of showing favoritism," Mr. Manikas concluded. Boo Kyum Kim, a member of Korea's National Assembly, said that in Korea the term "politics" still means "something bad-lies." He argued that NGOs can make politics better by helping to eliminate or remove bad politicians through such means as electoral blacklists, and by encouraging politicians to pass better laws. Civil society organizations (CSOs) had to be established in Korea because the existing political parties were not fulfilling their role, Mr. Kim argued. He thus was not concerned that CSO leaders might get involved in politics. Because Korean parties are regionally based, not issue-based, NGOs that garner public support by focusing on major issues may see their leaders move into the electoral arena. In the end, however, Mr. Kim agreed with Mr. Manikas that NGOs cannot replace political parties. Guillermo Luz of the Philippines responded to Mr. Manikas's comments about NGOs that perform election monitoring. As the secretary-general of the National Citizen's Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL), the premier election-monitoring NGO in Asia, Mr. Luz said he constantly had to ask, "How can we remain nonpartisan and independent, since our members are all partisan in a personal sense." Mr. Luz said that the organization does not speak openly about election preferences and its board members cannot go into political office for one year after an election. "We seek a high level of transparency…Our only client is the voter," Mr. Luz asserted. James Klein noted that because Thai parties had not been performing the traditional functions of political parties until recently, a number of NGOs had taken the initiative to articulate policy positions and to aggregate interests during the past fifteen years. Eventually, several political parties, such as the Thai Rak Thai party, took note of these developments and began duplicating them. The Democratic Party, for its part, drafted a policy platform for the first time. "Without CSOs pushing the process of political party development, I do not think Thai parties would have gone to this next level of maturity," Mr. Klein concluded. Fan Yun said that many civil society activists who had gone into the government after Taiwan's democratic breakthrough were criticized by old friends in the NGO community. But Ms. Fan thought that such individuals could serve as a bridge between government and civil society. "To be a bridge, you need some mechanism to keep the dialogue going." And she also acknowledged that the two sides had different views of the world: for NGOs leaders, politics is about "right and wrong" while for politicians it is about "winning the next election." CHO Hee-Yeon, a leader of the Peoples' Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, said that some fulltime members of the organization's staff are also members of Korea's Democratic Labor Party. But he said that while the group monitors everyday politics and proposes political reforms, it stops short of becoming a political party. Larry Diamond noted that there had been a robust discussion of how CSOs that work to improve the political system try to distance themselves from partisan politics. But he said there had been little discussion of whether functional or sectoral CSOs should become more involved with political parties. Several speakers had complained that Korean political parties were regionally based, he noted. What would happen if Korean parties were more policy-oriented? What if functional or sectoral interests were more active in Korean politics? Mr. Diamond asked. There have been some attempts to make Filipino elections more issue-based, Ms. Razon-Abad said. A party-list system was introduced, for example, to reduce the need for individual candidates to raise large amounts of money for campaigns. Nonetheless, political parties are still only electoral machines, and Filipino elections remain dominated by traditional, personality-based parties. Marvic Leonen added that the Philippines consisted of 7,000 islands with a diverse geography and diverse peoples. Of the 161 political parties active in the Philippines, only a handful have any kind of ideology. The great majority are what he called "temporary collators of selfish interests." And he wondered, "How can representative government survive in such a system?" Suteera Thomson Vichitranonda expanded on Mr. Klein's comments about how civil society organizations had influenced political party development in that country. A number of women's NGOs that were originally nonpolitical had come together to discuss issues of concern, including employment discrimination against women, child labor, and prostitution. In the process, she said, the groups discovered that Thai political parties did not have clear positions on these issues. The women's groups established a Gender Watch Group and began presenting issues and reform proposals to the public. But they also invited political party representatives to address their meetings, and several parties agreed to do so. "As a result," Ms. Thomson Vichitranonda said, "party positions on these issues have become much clearer." Unfortunately, such a strategy would probably not have any practical effect in Cambodia, Kek Galabru said. While the opposition party does communicate with the NGO community, it controls a mere fifteen out of 122 seats in the National Assembly and has little influence on the two-party ruling coalition. Ironically, she said, more than 50 percent of Cambodia's national budget comes from foreign donors, so one would assume that these donors have a significant influence in Cambodian politics. Nonetheless, the government has resisted NGO proposals to establish an independent human rights commission that would conform to international norms. And it regularly tries to control foreign donations that go directly to local NGOs, Ms. Galabru said. In the Philippines, according to Guillermo M. Luz, "political parties are weak and candidates can quickly switch parties. So it makes little sense to oppose a party as such." He said that each NGO must determine its own best strategy for political engagement. The Makati Business Club, for example, which Mr. Luz directs, decided to remain nonpartisan and to criticize political actors on an issue-by-issue basis. If other NGOs decide to become more directly involved in partisan politics, he urged them "to learn the rules and to play well." Mr. Luz also called for "a new type of forum where NGOs can interact with politicians" in a less confrontational setting than the day-to-day arena. In the end, however, Mr. Luz placed primary responsibility for the state of politics with the voters: "We Filipinos are passive consumers; voters need to demand more or else they will get what they deserve." An important and ongoing task of NGOs, he concluded, was "to calibrate voter expectations upward." Ms. Razon-Abad agreed with Mr. Luz that "an imperative for democratic reform is an active and informed electorate." But creating an informed electorate in poor communities is difficult: the urban poor typically need help with housing and employment, for example, while the rural poor are more likely to be concerned with land reform or food security issues. The primary responsibility for building the necessary coalitions thus falls to the NGO community, Ms. Razon-Abad asserted. "Most NGO leaders in Korea are urban academics and lawyers," Sook-Jong Lee replied. She wondered how such individuals could represent some of the other constituencies just described. Boo Kyum Kim added that, in his view, NGOs and parties would always remain in a competitive relationship. Both participants were thus somewhat skeptical that the situation would improve. And even if it does, reformers will still have to deal with an entrenched bureaucracy, noted Chodchoy Sophonpanich, the founding president of a Thai environmental NGO and a member of Thailand's first elected senate. Despite all of the above discussion, "There is widespread agreement that the engagement of CSOs in politics-as partners and critics-is good for democratic government," Peter Manikas replied. "We all agree that some parties are corrupt and unresponsive, but still we need strong political parties to have good democracy." He thus encouraged foreign donors to help restore some of the balance between political parties and NGOs "by providing training and resources across the spectrum to make parties more issue based and less dependent on individual personalities." |
|
| |