The purpose of the gathering, organized by the Club de Madrid with the support of the State Department of the United States of America, the Republic of Estonia and Community of Democracies, was to allow the tunisian and moldovan participants of the online, virtual LEND platform to have Face-to-Face to exchanges with Club de Madrid Members and the project’s advisors. The participants engaged in practical discussions on key themes for the consolidation of tunisian and moldovan democratic systems.
Watch here the meeting video summary
How a fair electoral process should be implemented was one of them. The discussion went deep on topics such as, election legislation, media accesibility for all the candidates, the participation of women and minorities, election legal frameworks, the role of international observers, posible e-participation systems, the importance of the secret vote and registration or the need for anonymity and simplicity of all of the procedures.
The talks also included how to ensure transparency and participatory processes in decision making; the critical importance of political parties in countries in transition; democracy and economic development; the role of Judiciary reform in consolidation of democratic systems or the need for Government change and coalition building in crisis situations.
The International LEND Advisors that added their experience and vision to the discussions were
- Liia Hanni: Director of the e-Democracy Program, e-Governance Academy, Estonia: as an she is an e-democracy expert she promotes the use of ICT for democratic governance and empowerment of citizens
- Matyas Eorsi: former State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Hungary. He has served in different leadership positions in the Parliament for 20 years and has assisted parliaments in the Arab Spring countries
- Rasto Kužel: Media analyst and expert with over 15 years of international experience, participating in some 26 OSCE/ODIHR election observation missions, most recently in Serbia and Iceland. He has also worked in more than 50 election and media-related projects and missions in the framework of the UN, Council of Europe, OSCE, IFES, NED, NDI and IMS, most recently in Georgia and Azerbaijan.
- Maria Leissner: Secretary General of the Community of Democracies. She has been Member of Parliament in Sweden from 1985-1991. She joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2000 and was Ambassador to Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Belize and Costa Rica in 2000-04. Maria Leissner has also served internationally as Director for NDI’s Governance program in Iraq 2004-2005. She has participated in a large number of election monitoring. She chaired the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan in 1991-94.
Here you can check the list of participants from the tunisian and moldovan delegations.
Background information
The LEND initiative leverages expertise from the Club de Madrid and 21st century technologies developed by Google, Spontania and OpenText to connect leaders who have successfully navigated the challenges of democratization with leaders in emerging democracies. It will augment face-to-face meetings with ongoing peer-to-peer exchanges via a sophisticated, secure virtual platform.
