An international symposium entitled "Democracy in Africa and the Arab World: Realities and ambitions," is being held here.
The two-day meeting, which started Wednesday, is bringing together eminent personalities such as lawyers, economists and politicians from across Africa and the Arab world to discuss, debate and share ideas with a view to identifying the most suitable system of democracy for African and Arab people.
The participants will also discuss ways and means to resolve the crisis that countries such as Iraq, Sudan and Palestine are facing.
Dr Samir Amine, director of the Third World Forum, president of the World Forum for Alternatives and president of the Centre for African and Arab Studies, who is taking part in the forum, said that the main challenge is to link the democratization process on the one hand, and social progress and national independence, on the other. According to Dr. Amine, the systems that are being suggested currently have been unable to link these objectives.
"We are happy to say that democracy is a form of managing political matters, when it comes to social problems, we say that they will be tackled by economic development, which again we are happy to leave in the hands of market regulations," Dr. Amine said.
Dr. Amine hailed the democratic progress that has been realized by Mauritania, which he described as one of the rare African and Arab countries, where elections have been held without any accusations of fraud or rigging. This represents progress and an important step, which must be followed by others as the challenge remains significant. According to him, the challenge is to use democracy to serve the masses and realize social progress.
Concerning democracy, the whole of the Arab world and Africa and even the entire world are lagging behind as we are living in difficult times, which are without a doubt more tragic for Africans than Europeans, Amine said.
In addition, he expressed satisfaction over the revolutionary progress that has been realized in Latin America because, according to him, popular movements in these countries were able to bring millions of people together and have therefore managed to link their democratization processes to social progress successfully.
On the issue of whether the Arab world and Africa could draw inspiration from western models of democracy, Dr. Amine noted that African and Arab countries must forge their own models of democracy as they had "different historic origins that we must defend even as others defend theirs."
Source: Xinhua
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