Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy

When we entered the conference room in Sélingué, 2 hours away from Mali’s capital, the previous group appeared to have left some rules on the blackboard. Be on time, cell phone on vibration mode, no sleeping in the room. Penalty for breaking the rules: candy for everybody. In case of repetitive offending, penalties could be raised up to a chicken. These rules seemed very appropriate for our group as well, and we decide to adopt them. The only woman in our group, whom we unanimously proclaimed ‘chef de village’, took the duty to supervise the maintenance of the rules. That was something to begin with!

I had been invited to Mali by the NIMD (Dutch institute for multi- party democracy). This foundation of Dutch political parties pursues programs to support democracy in about 20 countries and regions- more than half of it in Africa. One of these African countries is Mali. This west- African country, of which 60% is desert, is, according to the UNDP- index the world’s third poorest country. Three quarters of the population live below the poverty line, then the percentage of literacy is the lowest of whole Africa. The democratisation, that has been taking place since the nineties, is a stronger point. Mali looks back on a peaceful change of power after the elections, and is now governed it’s third multi- party government. Thereby Mali turns more and more into a model for other African nations heading towards a real democratic system.

In the end of January, another NIMD workshop had taken place in Mali, aiming at an agreed strategy plan with the political parties. This plan is meant to intensify continuity of the work NIMD does in Mali by providing a red line through the upcoming years. Many improvements of a democracy are not realizable within one year. Above that, the plan should create the possibilities for donors to join NIMD- activities. An important condition was that the 15 Malinesian politicians would reach a consensus concerning priorities. To facilitate this, I had been invited to provide an introduction on the importance of strategic planning and how to translate it into action. The decision about priorities, still, was in their hands.

What was striking to me was that there were no animosities amongst the participants, although they were belonging to 9 different political parties. Anyhow, Mali has a rich political life: there are officially more than 100 political parties in this country, and the number is still increasing. The fact that it is easy for a party to get subsidy of course contributes to this tendency. Only twelve of these parties are represented in parliament (which is not a precondition for subsidy). According to the participants, the appearance of numerous political parties is due to varying personal ambitions of political leaders: ‘Otherwise we could al be members of the same party’. That facilitated our discussion, but drew attention to a weak point of Malinesian democracy.

The good atmosphere between amongst the participants also manifested itself in the open character of the discussions. There was no fear to utter criticism, even towards the president (who was not present in person by the way). The weak position of the political parties (voters normally only know the political leader instead of the party behind him) and corruption in times of elections (voters expect the distribution of sugar, tea and t- shirts) were discussed without problems.

The agenda for the discussions was set by a Malinesian working for the African development bank, who had written an analysis about Malinesian democracy in his free time. In this book the twenty most important shortcomings were raised: from the fact that policy is made in a language that 80% of the population can literally not understand (French) to shortcomings in the constitution and the election statutes that originate from taking French texts too literally. Because nobody opposed his analysis, the primary task of the participants was to chose a number of priorities from it.

That revealed one very important cultural element: the striving for consensus. In Mali there is a consensus democracy, which means that all parties in parliament support the programme of the president. Thus, discussions during the IMD- workshop were very focused on reaching consensus. The D66- approach of ending that kind of discussions after exchanging arguments by voting, was at first perceived as unusual by the most, but proved it’s effectiveness. Aspects about which there had been various opinions; such as the recognition of one or more African languages or the reduction of the number of political parties; did not appear to be major problems after voting. In this way, the aim to set up a strategic plan and reach a consensus on the priorities within seven days, succeeded. Two of the most important priorities were the adjustment of the constitution and strengthening the political parties.

Discussion rounds in different regions will follow up this first strategic planning session, providing a possibility to complete and validate the results. In the mean time, Mali is preparing for presidential and parliamentary elections later on this year. Then, the parties will appear less than colleagues but much more as competitors, trying to convince the voters. Favourably with program- oriented suggestions and not by distributing material gifts. The leader of a new liberal party, to whom I had been talking the day before the workshops started, had a pragmatic solution for the latter: He said that because of the poverty, one cannot demand that voters would not accept presents. His advice was: 'Accept gifts at ease, but be aware that inside the voting booth you are alone with god.'