National Council for Participation – Joint Exercise for Edifying Participative Democracy in the Republic of Moldova

The dialogue with the civil society has become not only a commitment put on paper by Government, but a real objective it tends to implement. At this stage, the Government is aware of the value of transparency of work and participation of the society in the decision making process and of the principles of good governance promoted in all the EU member countries. The transparency and participation in the work of public authorities have a major impact both on the governance quality and on improving democracy within the society.

As a matter of fact, the 2008-2011 National Development Strategy, the Preliminary Country Plan of the Republic of Moldova within the USA Program „Millennium Challenge” lack efficient mechanisms of interaction between the public authorities and civil society in the implementation of the priorities of the citizens, while in the 2008-2009 Government Activity Program „Progress and Integration” the Central Executive has set the edification of an active dialogue with the civil society as priority.

Starting from these points, the Government launched in June this year the initiative of creating the National Council for Participation, which should become a partner of the Central Executive in strategic planning. In fact, the cooperation between Government and civil society is not a completely new field. A number of public authorities, both central and local, have practiced cooperation with the civil society in the drafting of policy papers, laws with major social, economic or environmental impact. By now, at least 3 forums for consulting the interested parties in country strategic planning have been set at Government level: Economic Council under the Prime Minister (Government Decision no. 1471 of December 9, 2003), National Committee for technical assistance provided to the Republic of Moldova (Government Decision no. 150 of February 12, 2007) and Council for Participation in the development, monitoring and evaluation of NDS (Government Decision no. 191 of February 25, 2008). The Civil Council has been created recently of civil society representatives for monitoring the work of the Center for Combating Economic Crimes and Corruption.

To streamline these forums, particularly in the policy development, monitoring and evaluation, a decision has been made to turn the consultation of civil society into a permanent, integrated and sustainable process. This decision has been materialized through the proposal to create the National Council for Participation. Thus, a transparent institutional framework for the decision making process will be created at the level of the central public authorities and minimal standards of cooperation between the Executive and the society will be set. At the initiative of a group of NGOs, this process will be extended over other decision making institutions by means of the law on the transparency in decision making process, which is in Parliament now for examination.

According to the concept of NCP creation, the council will facilitate the participation of the civil society in the national policy development, monitoring and evaluation and assist the Executive in the creation of an institutional consultation framework at the level of central public authorities. In this respect, the involvement of the members of the council in the monitoring of the correlation between the National Development Strategy, Medium Term Expenditure Framework, and other sector or cross sector strategic planning papers is important. Also, the organizations, members of the council, are expected to conduct and present alternative evaluations on the policy impact on the welfare of the citizens and on the development of options for adjusting Government policies.

42 public organizations responded to the Government initiative. This competition proved that there are pro-active public associations with strong capacities of expertise and rich experience of cooperation with the public authorities in the Republic of Moldova. 33 organizations specialized in different fields have been selected for membership of the National Council for Participation so that the executive can take advantage of relevant opinions and proposals during the discussions on a number of strategic documents.

The decisions of the Council will be taken as recommendations, while the Inter-ministerial Committee for Strategic Planning, headed by the Prime Minister whose mission is to ensure the integrity of the coordination of the strategic planning process, the arrangement of the major Government priorities in a hierarchical order and their correlation with the financial resources available and planned, will decide whether to accept or not these recommendations.

The Government expectations from the National Council for Participation (NCP) are great, given the complexity of the priorities set by the central Executive in the 2008-2009 Activity Program: improvement of governance quality, consolidation of the democratic institutions, ensuring country security and integrity, improvement of the economic competitiveness, promotion of social and regional integration. These objectives are not declarative; they entail launching well thought-out, result-oriented policies, initiation of a number of efficient actions, and without the support and participation of the civil society the Government efforts will not be enough. All these issues were addressed by the Prime Minister Zinaida GRECEANII during the first meeting of the National Council for Participation.

Just as high are the expectations of the NCP members. Arcadie Barbarosie, Executive Director of the Institute of Public Policies, appointed NCP chairman relies on a constructive attitude on the part of the NCP members to the work of the NCP. Thus, the criticism of a draft paper by the members of the commission should be well grounded and eventually, alternative solutions should be provided, even if sometimes it will be a difficult task given the fact that the argumentation of the alternative solutions requires in-depth analysis, and the member organizations are involved in the work of the NCP on a voluntary basis.

Arcadie Barbarosie considers that „in general, as a result of the cooperation between the executive and the civil society the governance quality will improve, and if we go back to the „good governance” formula we will find there tools for measuring the governance quality - more transparency, better quality of documents drafted by Government, fewer corruption cases, more efficient use of public money, more correctness and ethics in governance etc.”.

Also, the civil society relies on the openness of the Government in the consultation and participation process it has launched. The Chairman of the NCP states that, first of all, the members of the council consider that the Government should not take amiss its eventual criticism from this forum, because the non-governmental organizations will be guided by the best intentions. To accomplish the NCP mission successfully, the Government should be more open to the initiatives proposed by the council, because, according to the NCP chairman, this council is the first step in the development of a wide framework of cooperation between Government and civil society, while the Government should go on making efforts to turn its work into a more transparent process oriented towards the society needs.

The initiative to create the National Council for Participation is new for the Republic of Moldova and it is for the first time when the declarations of the public authorities are backed by concrete steps. The significance of this action lies in the wish of both public authorities and civil society to mobilize for mobilizing the whole society for edifying participative democracy in Moldova.