Elected officials and good governance

The management of a commune, a town hall, or a region requires capital importance today, notably with the ambitious project of advanced regionalization which aims at the valorization of the resources and potentialities of each region. In fact, local elected officials, councillors, and deputies must be able to fully exercise the missions assigned to them. And here, several questions arise concerning these representatives of the people and challenge both observers of national politics and neophytes: what is the profile of the elected official? Why do people go into politics? What role do political parties play and how do they recruit the elites called upon to form the political class? What means and what mechanisms must be mobilized to train and strengthen the capacities of local elected officials? And how can local elected officials engaged in politics, trained, and professional, impact local governance, and consequently local development? It is to these different questions and others still that the organization of this international colloquium on "Good governance and the training of local and parliamentary elected officials," organized on February 6 and 7 at the initiative of the South-North Centre, in partnership with the Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University of Fès, the Wilaya of the Fès-Boulemane region, the General Directorate of Local Authorities, the Fès-Boulemane region, the Fès City Council, with the support of the Hanns Seidel Foundation, tends to respond. "Territorial governance is today at the centre of debates and choices to be made in terms of development, implementation, and monitoring-evaluation of public policies," indicates Moha Ennaji, president of the South-North Centre, in a press release. He specifies that the concretization and implementation of these important projects require the mobilization of different local actors and the implementation of a deep strategy of training, capacity building, and skills development. For him, beyond reforms and legal standards, the success of the decentralization and advanced regionalization project passes first and foremost through human capital, whether elected or appointed, as was highlighted in the report of the Consultative Commission on Regionalization and in the various meetings organized on this subject.

The draft of the new Constitution insisted on several principles of good governance and made good governance the foundation of a democratic state of law. Title 12 of the draft was entirely devoted to the bodies of good governance, notably the National Authority for Probity and the Fight against Corruption. Several articles of the draft Constitution also included points on the need to link responsibility in the management of public affairs to accountability, and an expansion of the powers of Parliament in terms of legislation and control of the government.

Provider / Source : Rachida Bami, Le Matin