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1. Responsibility of the Constitutional Institutions

1.1 The reasons for a programme relating to the responsibility of the Institutions

1.1.a At the level of the Institution of the Presidency

1.1.b At the level of the Government

1.1.c At the level of the Parliament

1.1.d At the level of the judicial power

1.1.e At the level of the Constitutional Court

1.1.f At the level of the Economic, Cultural and Social Council

1.1.g At the level of the Supreme Council of Local Authorities

I.2 Responsibility at the level of the Public Administration

1. Transparency in the functioning of Constitutional Institutions

2. Transparency in the Public Administration

3. Transparency in the Justice System

The Republic of Mali is at the crossing of several roads.

First of all, it must take account of the aspirations of a large segment of its population whose standards continue to be the values of the pre-colonial past which it often defends with passion and determination.

Secondly, it must endeavour to conform to the principles and requirements of a modern State of law, which is the reference point of another segment (primarily an intellectual one) of its population.

In addition, it must take account of the requirements of a diverse national environment without harming national unity and coming under the influence of an outside world which wants to set up universal rules of behaviour for international actors whose principles of good governance must constitute an ever-growing number of components.

Like African countries south of the Sahara (which occupies a substantial part of its territory), Mali today has formal instruments for transparency and responsibility both at the level of the Institutions provided for in the Constitution and at the level of the Public Administration. However, the responsibility of the Institutions is established among them by means of the traditional mechanisms of counterweights and balance of powers. It is not established with regard to the citizens, who in fact have no control over the Institutions once they have been established. These mechanisms do not satisfy the Malian people, so that there is a need for setting up systems that are more open; if the need arises, the Institutions should freely consent to open themselves to the public.

The unilateral method of operation inherited from French practice is equally predominant at the level of the Public Administration. Under the pressure of the events of March 1991,the proliferation of associations for the protecting the interests of citizens and the growth of the private press, the Malian Administration is currently exhibiting an inclination to improve its relations with its clients. The advances made in this matter are very timid and sometimes look like self-promoting propaganda or attempts to justify administrative actions. The institution of the Mediator of the Republic and the recent promulgation of the Act governing relations between administrators and clients are opportunities that can enable Malians to force their Public Administration to act with transparency and responsibility. However, in view of the particularly high rate of illiteracy, if these opportunities are to be utilized to best advantage, they will require a democratic culture, a civil society thoroughly capable of making the public decision-makers do its bidding, and a professional press that can investigation instead of merely expressing opinions.

The judicial power has been made independent by the Constitution within the framework of a guarantee of individual and collective freedoms; however, it appears today to have hidden the use of its independence in the opinion of Mali's citizens, who often wonder whether the Constitution should not be revised in order to take away that independence. What is at stake is an essential pillar of democracy but also an essential condition for guaranteeing respect for human rights.

Studies and discussions in depth appear to be indispensable for proposing a better adaptation of certain statutes and regulations, without losing sight of the need to bring a new vigour to the democratic process, to the Institutions which are its driving force, and to make greater responsibility rest with the citizen, the one for whom development is intended and who creates it.

However, whatever the established mechanisms and Institutions may be, it is important that the system should provide mechanisms for monitoring, involving rewards and sanctions in order to promote good work and make sure that misbehaviour no longer goes unpunished.

If transparency can be defined as opening to the public the processes in which decisions are formulated and taken by the public authorities, so that the conduct of public affairs can be constantly monitored, one may say without fear of being mistaken that this has been a constant concern of the public powers in Mali since the pre-colonial period. However, its effectiveness has varied from one period to another, to such an extent that the problem of transparency has become an essential concern today.

The Malian standard for transparency is a conference held in 1236 (in other words, six centuries before colonial penetration took into present-day Mali), during which the Emperor called, above all, for a solution of the problem of acquiring private property, which had been found to be the basis of most of the conflicts within the Empire. The Act proclaimed at that conference (since writing did not exist in the community at that time) established the principle that individual property could be acquired in only five ways, namely, through: (1) physical labour; (2) inheritance; (3) scientific work; (4) exchange or sale; and (5) gift. It was then stated that any property held by an individual in any other manner was to be regarded as having been simply entrusted to him temporarily and that it would be taken from him and restored to its owner as soon as that owner was known.

The procedure for acquiring individual property required testimony which would give it the light of day and prove the uprightness of the owner. This notion of uprightness was an important value and was required for admission to any post of public responsibility. There was a proverb which said "when guinea-hens walk in a line, each one looks at the back of the neck of the one in front of her". Property owned without a witness was described as "Suro fê", meaning "a thing of the night", to indicate that it had not really been acquired.

In the Empire of Mali the motto was "Science, Work and Justice". In order to guarantee the effective exercise of justice at all levels, the person entrusted with apportioning or dividing an item of property was always the last one served, in order to compel him to make a correct apportionment or a fair and equitable division of the property.

It is interesting to point out that the aforementioned provisions were applicable to society in its entirety (authorities and citizens). By means of the procedure for the acquisition of individual property, the Malians of the thirteenth century set up and guaranteed the conditions for transparency in the management of public and private affairs. Even better, they established Institutions, monitoring mechanisms and specialists to make sure that these provisions were constantly operative everywhere in the Empire. Even after the disintegration of the Empire of Mali, these provisions remained valid, at least at the level of the people of whose culture they continued to form a part. Today, they still constitute standards in many parts of present-day Mali.

It was under colonialism that the above-mentioned values began to disappear as standards in the management of public affairs and to be replaced by French standards. One is reminded here of the scene in which a herdsman who had brought a bull to a District Chief (an authority appointed by the representative of the colonial Power) won a lawsuit against a farmer who had brought a pot of honey. The farmer, upset by the unfairness of the judgement, asked whether the District Chief had in fact received the pot of honey he had sent when he had come to tell his version of the facts in dispute between him and the herdsman. The District Chief answered in the affirmative but explained that the herdsman had come with a bull which "had broken the pot of honey".

We are therefore in agreement with Jeremy POPE and General Olusegun OBASANJO in rejecting the argument that corruption is part of African culture; it must be recognized that this exchange, requiring witnesses, would not have taken place and that the verdict would certainly have been a fair one. So long as the evil practices of its metropolitan or indigenous representatives did not interfere with its objective of domination, the colonial Power tolerated them and, in fact, often encouraged them. These practices gradually became an integral part of the administrative culture and the methods of managing public affairs. They continued in the public service of independent Mali and today still constitute the greatest obstacle to national development.

The problem of responsibility (understood in the sense of governance as the obligation of a public authority to give its constituents an accounting of the way in which it performs its tasks) in the Malian public sector is an acute, indeed a tragic one. The landmark statement in the matter was made in an address by President Modibo KEITA, in which he promised "to take strong measures against departmental chiefs or staff members who evade their responsibility and cover up any incompetence, misappropriation of funds or misbehaviour on the part of their subordinates because they are afraid of those subordinates’ connections". There is, first of all, a failure to understand the concept of responsibility, which is sometimes perceived by civil servants as a blank cheque with regard to their subordinates and the resources placed at their disposal, and sometimes as an invitation to do nothing in order to avoid sanctions, on the strength of the principle that "he who does nothing has nothing to fear". The conformist administration that Mali has inherited from the colonial Power suggests that responsibility is apparently defined as a public function entrusted to an authority on the basis of clear standards considered sufficient to judge the exercise of those functions. Consequently, so long as one can prove that he is conforming to the regulations and procedures, he is considered to have done his duty to his superiors and clients, irrespective of the results obtained.

A number of political and administrative practices lie at the root of the particular severity of the problem of responsibility in Mali. A desire to take up the challenges of national sovereignty rapidly was what led the authorities of the First Republic (1960-1968) to create a proliferation of public services even though competent human resources to manage them did not yet exist. By appointing military personnel to head many parts of the civil service after the coup d’État of November 1968, the Military Committee of National Liberation and its Government aggravated the confusion about the concept of responsibility in Mali. By reason of their training, military people view responsibility solely as responsibility towards their superiors. Wherever they have gone, they have imposed this concept on their co-workers. The Second Republic, which was in reality a régime for legitimatizing military power in Mali, was unable to bring about a far-reaching transformation of this situation. The programmes of administrative reform in Mali were aimed essentially at the quantitative aspects of the public sector. They were aimed inter alia at reducing the burden which the operation of the public sector imposed on the State budget. The actions taken in this respect included: (1) reduction in the total amount of wages and salaries; (2) reduction of the size and number of public services; (3) early retirement of civil servants; (4) a freeze for several years on the payment of salary increases when civil servants were promoted; (5) the introduction of organic staffing tables in administrations; (6) the privatization of public-sector enterprises; (7) the introduction of competitive examinations for civil-service positions, etc. These programmes were initiated and put into operation in order to meet the needs of the State alone, and they disregarded or even deliberately excluded, the concerns of the citizen, including those relating to transparency in procedures. They incidentally imposed a great many privations on civil servants. The struggle for responsible posts that brought material and pecuniary advantages became a question of survival for staff members, with no concern for being accountable to anyone (political authorities or clients).

In the final analysis, Mali today has a public sector full of paradoxes, of mutual suspicions and accusations, even if these are not openly expressed. The Public Administration has in effect lost its credibility, in the sense that it is not giving satisfaction to the political leadership, which has the feeling that the Administration is doing everything it can to evade political supervision in the name of a non-existent professionalism while it is consuming the bulk of public resources for its operations without any convincing results to show for it. It is also failing to satisfy its clients, who see it as an opaque foreign body working for itself, pursuing its own goals, far removed from the concerns of the citizens, and behaving in a proprietary manner with regard to public resources. At the same time, it is not giving satisfaction to its own staff, in view of the precariousness of their living conditions, which has resulted from the deprivations imposed upon them as part of the reform programmes. The upper levels of the Administration, for their part, accuse the political leadership of untimely intervention in their affairs which prevents them from exercising their prerogatives over their subordinates. They believe that the lower-level staff denigrate them in the eyes of the public by blaming them for all the dysfunctions in public services. The lower-level staff, in turn, believe that the clients demand more of them than they can deliver, in view of the particularly low level of the resources allocated for the execution of their missions and in view of the high degree of centralization of power. There is therefore a certain crisis of confidence between the citizen, on the one hand, and the political, administrative and judicial powers, on the other, a crisis which must be resolved; this necessitates immediate and far-reaching action in the area of governance. A programme of governance targeted on responsibility and transparency can, in addition, help to prevent social problems in the future.

Side by side with this seemingly pessimistic picture, there is reason to point out some important recent advances that give reason for hope. Among these advances we may mention:

- the existence of a truly independent private press;

- the proliferation of associations in every sector of national life;

- freedom of opinion.

Moreover, there is a genuine political will to abandon the traditional unilateral methods of decision-making in favour of harmonization, the provision of information to the citizens and negotiation. The institution of the Mediator of the Republic and the recent promulgation of the Act governing relations between the Public Administration and the clients of public services are manifestations of this desire on the part of public powers to see to it that anyone who holds any segment of public authority will give an accounting of the exercise of that authority and be open to its clients. Besides this political will, it may be remarked that the Malian citizen has become very demanding towards the public powers since the social revolution of March 1991. We also know that change in general, and change in the public sector in particular, comes about essentially under pressure and does so rapidly.

At the formal level, the question of responsibility is governed in Mali by the Constitution with regard to the Institutions of the Republic, in statutes and regulations for public services and public agencies. Thus, the President of the Republic is responsible for maintaining the continuity of the State which he heads; the Government is responsible for determining and carrying on the policy of the Nation and has the Public Administration and the armed forces at its disposal in order to do so; the National Assembly votes on legislation; the Courts and Tribunals administer justice; the Supreme Council of Local Authorities concerns itself with the quality of life of the citizens within the collectivities; and the Economic, Social and Cultural Council attends to all questions relating to economic, social and cultural development.

The Constitution of Mali has set up a mechanism for the separation of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, involving a system of reciprocal monitoring, a careful examination of which makes clear the degree, the deeper meaning and the direction of the responsibilities of each of the constitutional Institutions. The supervision of each Institution by the others is deemed to guarantee transparency in their actions. In this system:

The Government is responsible to the National Assembly, which can overturn it by using the procedure of a motion of censure or by disapproving the Prime Minister’s declaration of his programme or his general policy;

The National Assembly can be dissolved by the President of the Republic, who, for this purpose, need only consult the Prime Minister and the President of the National Assembly, whose concurring or positive opinions are not required;

The Constitutional Court judges whether the laws voted by the National Assembly are in conformity with the Constitution and regulates the functioning of the other Institutions, as well as the activity of the public powers;

The term of office of the President of the Republic (who is elected by direct universal suffrage) is five years, and he may be re-elected only once; this makes him responsible to the people as a whole. In addition, the exercise of some of his prerogatives requires the prior express authorization of the National Assembly. Other prerogatives may be exercised only with the approval of the Council of Ministers;

The President of the Republic appoints the Prime Minister but cannot dismiss him except when the Prime Minister submits his resignation. Similarly, he can appoint and dismiss other members of the Government but only on the Prime Minister's recommendation;

The President of the Republic presides over the Council of Ministers, which discusses and decides the actions of the Government as a unit and the main actions of each of the Ministers before they are implemented;

The President of the Republic and the Ministers may be impeached by the National Assembly for high treason or criminal and delinquent actions and brought before the High Court of Justice;

The members of all Institutions are subject to prosecution before Courts and Tribunals under clearly defined conditions, even if the President of the Republic is the Chairman of the Higher Council of the Ministry, which is the disciplinary body of the Magistrates;

The Government is responsible for ensuring that judicial decisions are executed in good faith, under penalty of making itself responsible in the individual case concerned.

This seemingly magnificent and perfect theoretical arrangement is almost the same everywhere in Africa, where the Constitution is generally inspired to a large extent by that of the former colonial Power. Its implementation is quite another matter, inter alia because of:

1. The imbalance of real power between the Institutions that is established by the Constitution. This clear imbalance can be seen from a careful reading of the missions entrusted to the different Institutions;

2. The imbalance in real resources between the Institutions that exists in practice. It is no secret to anyone that in the tradition of the Francophone countries, it is the Government in particular and the Executive in general (including the President of the Republic) that controls the material and financial resources, and in consequence the human resources, which enable them to gain an ascendancy over the legislative and judicial branches;

3. The weakness of the (human, material and financial) capacity of some Institutions to carry out effectively their task of monitoring the others.

In spite of these imbalances, the Institutions provided for in the Constitution represent the will and some concerns of Malians as expressed during the National Conference of July and August 1991. The missions assigned to them were considered essential in order to avoid the resurgence of certain types of behaviour and certain institutional practices which were criticized under the Second Republic and which were the root cause of the social revolution of March 1991 that put an end to that régime. By limiting the term of the President of the Republic and establishing a Prime Minister who is the Head of Government, Malians were trying to achieve at least three objectives: (1) to compel the President to remember at all times that he is responsible to the people, who can deny him their confidence if he has not served satisfactorily during his first five-year term ; (2) to prevent a de facto presidency for life; and (3) to limit the powers of the President of the Republic in the management of public affairs.

Malians have never believed that the President of the Second Republic was responsible to them, by virtue of the simple fact that he had come to power through a coup d'État. One may also wonder whether that President felt answerable to the people, for the same reasons. The slogan "power comes from the muzzle of a gun", which was regularly enunciated by the men responsible for the 1968 coup, remained in the popular imagination until the fall of that régime, so long as a single member of the Military Committee of National Liberation had a hand in the management of public affairs.

On the other hand, the fact that the Constitutional Court annulled the 13 April 1997 elections because they had been badly organized constituted a strong message to the Malian executive and the entire people, who had just realized that the judicial power of the Third Republic intended to exercise its constitutional prerogatives. What is more, the Government today is losing an enormous number of lawsuits, something which was simply unimaginable in the past. In 1997 it had to pay more than 2 billion CFA francs.

Despite the predominance of the Adema party in the National Assembly, the Assembly does not intend to be merely a registration office for the bills deposited by the Government on the desk of the President of the Assembly, who, in any case, misses no opportunity to remind the Government that his Institution intends to exercise its constitutional prerogatives. The Deputies of the opposition party are, in fact, not the only ones to question the members of the Government.

The Economic, Social and Cultural Council, whose role it is to ascertain and publicize the expectations, needs and problems of civil society, is ceaselessly calling upon the Executive to provide the resources necessary for the discharge of the Council’s constitutional responsibilities and is publicly reporting any failure of the other Institutions to transmit to it the files that should be transmitted, or any failure to ask its opinion on the subjects specified in the Constitution.

In its Constitution, Mali has provided for eight institutions distributed among a two-part Executive (the President of the Republic and the Government), a unicameral legislative body in the form of a chamber of Deputies (the National Assembly), a judicial branch represented by the Supreme Court, in addition to which there are two other Courts specializing in specific areas and subjects (the Constitutional Court and the High Court of Justice), and two advisory bodies (the Economic, Social and Cultural Council and the Supreme Council of Local Authorities). The Malian Constituent Assembly has been accused of having been too ambitious in establishing, during the euphoria of the March 1991 revolution, a number of Institutions whose viability was not ensured in advance and the resources for whose functioning would be beyond the capabilities of a poor country. What is beyond doubt is the existence of real needs for these Institutions in Mali, in view of the country’s constitutional history and constitutional practices.

In fact, in the light of the abuses and the personalization of power that had taken place in the Executive, the demand for a Prime Minister who is the Head of Government and is not the President of the Republic had been made by Malians to the President of the Second Republic; he, however, instead of undertaking the process of constitutional revision to achieve that goal, had preferred to appoint a Prime Minister who was Coordinator of the actions of the other Ministers, while the President himself remained the Head of Government, Chief of the Administration and Chief of the Armed Forces, the primary leader of the single constitutional party that held power. Expecting such a person to exhibit responsibility was illusory, to say the least, when one considers the added fact that he could be re-elected indefinitely.

The multi-party system guaranteed in the Constitution, the recognition of the judicial system as a power, the newness of some of the Institutions, the changes made in others and their large number make it essential today to prepare and implement a programme of institutional support if Malians want to derive the expected advantages from their creation. The existence of a civil society and a press capable of establishing themselves as counter-powers to the constitutional Institutions is indispensable for safeguarding the gains made on 26 March 1991 and strengthening the democratic process now going on in the country.

1.1.a At the level of the Institution of the Presidency Unlike the Constitution of the Second Republic, which clearly provided that the President of the Republic was the Chief of the Administration and of the Armed Forces, the Constitution of the Third Republic makes no reference to the President of the Republic in this connection and simply provides that the Government "has the Administration and the Armed Forces at its disposal". This vagueness may give rise to conflict between these Institutions in the event of French-style coexistence, as evidenced by the experience of Niger. However, this is not a case of forgetting or omitting anything, as can be seen if one refers to the debates of the National Conference. At the National Conference, in fact, there was a rather protracted debate concerning the role that should be assigned to the President of the Republic. While some wanted a President of the Republic who had a purely ceremonial post, in the light of our recent past, there were others who favoured an active President of the Republic, on the basis of the idea that in Africa power cannot be shared. The compromise made between these two positions makes the situation of this Institution rather delicate. It must ensure the regular functioning of the public powers, maintain the continuity of the State, play the role of an arbitrator among the Institutions, being the Head of the first among them, embody national unity by remaining at all times the President of all Malians.

The discharge of his duties requires the President of the Republic to be, at the same time, remote enough from everyday executive actions to avoid "getting wet" and near enough to the field of action to be able to play correctly his role as a well-informed arbitrator. This balancing act in a country which is just beginning its democratization process requires specific actions to whose performance the present programme will be able to contribute. These actions may consist in sharply targeted studies followed by debates in which the representatives of the various Institutions will take part. It is hoped that the Institutions will be better able to master the constitutional mechanisms, which would result in preventing inter-Institution conflicts when, for example, the parliamentary majority is different from the presidential incumbency.

1.1.b At the level of the Government Declaring that there is an incompatibility between the functions of a member of the Government and the functions of "ny parliamentary mandate, any function of professional representation at the national or local scale, any public employment or any lucrative professional activity", the Malian Constitution has established a Government whose legitimacy is taken from the President of the Republic, who is elected by direct universal suffrage. The fact that the Government has not a direct but a derived legitimacy is in itself an element which facilitates the implementation of governmental responsibility. Indeed, the President of the Republic has no obligation to appoint the Prime Minister from the membership of the parliamentary majority. Similarly, he is not required to accept any and all proposals on a governmental list submitted by the Prime Minister for appointments to be made by the President. Lastly, the President can dismiss the Prime Minister (but only if the latter submits to the President the resignation of his Government) and of the Ministers (upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister). Despite these precautions, the insecurity of the members of the Government constitutes a problem, exacerbated by their fragility caused by a lack of political legitimacy, a consequence of the incapacities imposed upon them. In other words, even if only at theoretical level, it is easy to hold the Government to responsibility in the event of failure in the exercise of its functions. However, some objective reasons and some reasons of political expediency suggest that the Prime Minister should be appointed from among the majority in order to facilitate his relations with the legislative body and enable him to apply the policy for which the people have sent a majority to the National Assembly. Moreover, when making his proposal for the composition of the governmental team, the Prime Minister is "obliged" in practice to take account of the configuration of the National Assembly. Thus, the question is: how can the people compel the Government to make its actions match the people’s concerns? One is tempted to answer: through the National Assembly’s ability to hold the Government to responsibility. One may question the effectiveness of such an indirect procedure. There is a need for some in-depth studies on the strengths and the limitations of this mechanism in Mali.

In addition, the governmental structure (the number of Ministers) is fixed only in the Decree providing for the composition of each Government. Thus, the number of Ministries varies each time there is a reshuffling of the Cabinet, for reasons which do not always satisfy the needs of efficiency and effectiveness of a country with limited resources.

Today there is an essential debate which has not been settled. This is the debate on whether the constitutional provision placing the Administration at the disposal of the Government should be interpreted as meaning that the Prime Minister, Head of Government, is the Head of the Administration. If the answer is in the affirmative, a search should be made for a mechanism for implementing Governmental responsibility for the dysfunctional state found in the Administration. In this case, one would question the legitimacy of the present placement of the General Control of the State in the hands of the President of the Republic in so far as a service of the Public Administration is involved. On the other hand, if the same question is answered in the negative, this amounts to recognizing that the President of the Republic, Head of the Executive Branch, can intervene directly in the functioning of public services following the reports of the General Control of the State which are addressed directly to him; this could impair his role as an arbitrator.

This programme could help to clarify the situation by means of studies leading to the establishment of mechanisms and techniques for inter-institutional collaboration that could prevent any crises from arising. The newness of our institutions and the unique anchoring of a democratic culture suggest interventions in this sphere both at the level of the services subordinate to the Office of the President, at the level of the Prime Minister and the Ministers, and equally at the level of society in general. On the basis of the evaluation of our practice in the composition of the governmental team, we should envisage the stabilization of the structure of that team around our major concerns. The Malian citizen today ardently wishes to have the power to influence governmental action directly, beyond the mechanisms of classical inter-institutional control. He wants the Government to be directly and regularly accountable to him for its activities, whose effects he feels in his daily life. The Mediator of the Republic has been established in order to participate in the solution of this problem. The desired interventions should thus include a material, financial, technical and methodological support to the Mediator as soon as he has been installed. It could also include support for the press in order to compel the Government to provide accurate information to the public and an intensive activity to strengthen the capacities of civil society.

1.1.c At the level of Parliament In providing that "all imperative mandates are null and void", the Constitution of Mali intended to free the members of the National Assembly from "blackmail" at the hands of their constituents after the elections. In the name of this same provision, some Deputies elected on the lists of political parties and on the basis of the programmes of those parties have left to form new parties, become allied with parties against which they had fought during the campaign, joining parties whose programmes were initially opposed to theirs. All of this can take place without any obligation to be accountable to their constituents. The result has been the discrediting of politicians, of the political class and of the political process in the eyes of the citizens. Consequently the only real way in which the voter can make his deputy behave responsibly is to refuse to vote for him if he wishes to stand for office again after the expiry of his term. This method is in fact more theoretical than practical, for at least two reasons.

The first is the high rate of illiteracy, the low political level and the low level of democratic culture among the voters. This makes them easy prey for the often contradictory explanations of the candidates who frequently have the benefit of veritable electoral mechanisms at their disposal, that is to say, the political parties. Secondly, even though the programmes of economic reform, in this case the programmes of structural adjustment, have contributed to the situation, the similarity of the programmes of the different political parties creates confusion in the minds of the voters, transforming elections into mere choices between persons and not between programmes. There is a need to conduct continued studies of debates on the means that communities could acquire in order to enable them to make candidates speak in truthful language during the electoral campaigns and to monitor the actions of those elected. The traditional authorities could help in this area by taking advantage of their moral prestige to induce the members of the community to oppose harmful political practices. Similarly, it would be desirable to examine the possibilities of strengthening the capacities of political parties to conceive and to send programmes which are better targeted with regard to their ideologies.

The present programme should contribute to the creation of a democratic culture, the training of citizens aware of their political choices with a view to enable them to make the Deputies recognize their responsibility to the voters. In the face of such an obligation, it is hoped that the Assembly will exercise more control over the Government, compelling it to take the concerns of their constituencies into account. As everywhere else in Africa, the Malian National Assembly is in a difficult situation. It is weak in human capacity, required by the Constitution to vote on the budget submitted by the Government, which it cannot really monitor by reason of the short time limits which are imposed upon it, on the one hand, and by the technical weakness of its human resources, on the other. These weaknesses and inadequacies in the technical and human sphere prevent the Assembly from monitoring the action of the Government, which has at its disposal the Public Administration, in which the bulk of the nation's human resources are working.

The programme should therefore include actions intended to strengthen the capacities of the National Assembly to gain a better understanding of the bills presented by the Government, enable it to compel the Government to be accountable for its actions and help the Deputies, in turn, to present some bills. It should enable the National Assembly to create in its own midst a memory which is based on its own experiences and on appropriate documentation. The training of the Deputies and the introduction of experts to assist the National Assembly could be envisaged. Thus, the questioning of the members of the Government by Deputies, as it appears in the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly, would be better prepared. The debates around such questioning will be more useful to the Nation. If this is done, the Assembly will then be able to establish Committees of Inquiry on specific questions, thereby contributing substantially to the moralization of public life and creating the conditions for social peace. The Malian National Assembly is at this moment expressing a willingness to open itself to the press. Such an opportunity should be seized by the press and by civil society.

1.1.d At the level of the judicial power While the Constitution of the Second Republic described it as "judicial authority", that of the Third Republic describes the Malian judicial system as the "judicial power", specifying that it is independent of the executive and legislative powers. This is not merely a matter of juggling words; it is the expression of the rejection of earlier practices. Indeed, the judiciary was used under the Second Republic by the executive power as a means for regularizing behaviour as well as political actions which were often contrary to law. The personnel of this apparatus were managed and continue to be managed as agents of the General Administration. For this reason, the judicial family contributed actively to the overthrow of the Second Republic.

The present implementation of the prerogatives which the Constitution grants to the judicial system poses enormous problems, whose urgent and appropriate solution will determine the pursuit of the democratic process now being constructed in the country. In fact, the judicial system seems to interpret its independence as constituting license, that is to say, the right to do anything and everything without having to be accountable to anyone. In any case, this is how this situation is perceived by the citizen, who wonders whether the Constitution should not be urgently revised in order to take away this independence. But the rule of law necessarily requires a judicial system that is protected against political vicissitudes. This is in the interest of the citizen himself. The independence of justice and consequently of the judge sitting in a case is essential to the protection of the citizen, to respect for human rights, to the development of business, to social peace, but on condition that the use made of it is appropriate and in conformity with the spirit of the Constituent Assembly. In addition to these difficulties, which are associated with the quality and the behaviour of the human resources at the level of the judicial family, the system contains some other noteworthy inadequacies, among which are:

The inadequacy of financial and material resources, as well as the precariousness of the equipment and the premises;

The centralization of structures and staff;

The lack of monitoring and evaluation of the human resources;

The inappropriateness of statutes and regulations;

The lack of dissemination of the law, including such lack at the level of those who are responsible for its application;

Corruption;

The failure to implement certain judicial decisions;

The complexity and inertia of judicial procedures;

Inadequate advanced training of the magistrates;

The existence of many judicial lacunae.

The Malians expect the judicial power to get closer to the people, by becoming less concentrated, and to dispense justice by following the existing law. This suggests the construction of new premises, the recruitment of new magistrates, an intensive re-reading of the colonial documents, the filling of vacant judgeships, studies on customary law aimed at discovering what fundamental aspects of it should be included in positive law, inquiries for the drafting of new legal documents. The people also demand that the justice system should render equitable justice, which implies major changes in the behaviour both of the judges and of those brought before them. In the light of its impact on the strengthening of the democratic process in progress in the country, and as the last protection of the citizen when he has exhausted all other avenues of appeal, the judicial system must have a more direct legitimacy, which it is not given by the present method for the appointment of its agents.

The contribution of the programme at the level of the judicial power is based on the importance of justice as a major pillar of democracy and on reasons of social peace, in so far as the citizens, if they find it impossible to have a judicial system that is responsive to their habits, run the risk of resorting to people's justice, as has already happened in many cases.

1.1.e At the level of the Constitutional Court By providing that the Constitutional Court is "the organ which regulates the functioning of the institutions and the activity of the Public Powers", that "the decisions of the Constitutional Court are not subject to any appeal", and that "these decisions are binding on the public powers, on all administrative and jurisdictional authorities, and on all individuals and bodies corporate", the Malian Constituent Assembly established an Arbitrator Institution considered to be irreproachable and virtuous. It acts as arbitrator between all the other Institutions by ruling on conflicts of power granted to them, between the Public Powers and the citizen, while guaranteeing the fundamental rights of the human person and public freedoms. No error is admissible at the level of this Court, whose decisions are fraught with consequences.

The experience of past elections has established the need for strengthening this Court in human resources (expert opinions and administrative support at various places), material (logistical) resources and financial resources, especially just before, during and after legislative and presidential elections and referendum operations. Apart from these missions, it would also be desirable to have studies and debates which propose an optimal composition for it.

1.1.f At the level of the Economic, Social and Cultural Council Under the terms of the Constitution, this body, although a consultative one, is a veritable "advocate" of society to the President of the Republic, the Government, and the National Assembly with regard to national economic, cultural and social life. It constitutes a veritable "great constitutional trade union" of civil society. Like every advocate and every trade union, it necessarily expresses views and opinions and conducts lobbying with the institutions which are decisive in its sphere of governance. The problem here is not so much a question of responsibility as a question of effectiveness, which is, moreover, a function of the services placed at the disposal of the Institution in order to enable it to fulfill its function. The importance of this Institution should be emphasized: it may in fact happen that the programme determined by the Government departs from the true concerns of the citizens in proportions which could lead to social crises. This Institution is responsible, in such a case, for making the President and the National Assembly aware of the situation. The discharge of such a responsibility requires large resources enabling the Institution to prepare "the annual survey of the civil society's expectations, needs and problems, with guidelines and proposals", as the Constitution requires it to do. It may reasonably be expected that the Government will not place such resources at the disposal of an Institution of this kind unless it has a need to establish a source of information for researchers in the social sciences, and the citizenry in general. Since it is a "national trade union" representing civil society in its entirety, one should truly envisage the representation in this institution of the traditional legitimacies which, without being viewed in the form of an association or trade union, play a great social role.

The programme should provide a financial, technical, material and methodological support to this Institution, and the quality of their information should be such as to compel the Government to take them into account in the determination and the conduct of national policy with regard the economic and the social and cultural development. Moreover, an evaluation study of the Institution could be conducted on the basis of its present difficulties in functioning and in collecting the information necessary for the preparation of its survey, which is regarded as an annual one, even though the Institution establishes it on a biennial basis.

1.1.g At the level of the Supreme Council of Local Authorities This Institution, which has not yet been established, is another "advocate" and "trade-union" of the local government authorities. Its mission is "to study and to present an opinion, with a statement of grounds, on any local and regional development policy, to make proposals to the Government concerning the protection of the environment and the improvement of citizens’ quality of life within the communities". The Supreme Council of Local Authorities cannot be dissolved. This constitutional provision enables it to be free from attacks on the part of the other Institutions. As a manifestation of the citizens grouped in local communities within the pattern of decentralization, the problem of responsibility is less important here than the concern for effectiveness. At the National Conference, it was planned that this Institution would become the second chamber of the National Assembly in the form of a Senate. The opinions expressed against this option won the debate, and the mission of the Council was centered around the one described above. If it is confirmed, the Supreme Council of Local Authorities will act as one of the essential Institutions of the Republic in the sense that it will determine the future of territorial decentralization in Mali.

The expected support of the programme in favour of this Institution should include the training of its members for the decentralization, organization and management of the territory. The Institution should also have the benefit of expert opinion, like the kind provided for the National Assembly. Furthermore, the problems involved in its installation should be taken into account in terms of infrastructures, equipment, and functioning.

A glance at the introductory part of this document may lead one to the conclusion that there is no place for the exercise of responsibility in the Malian Public Administration. However, whatever may be the level of development of a country in the real situation in which a given Administration exists, there are always applicable universal principles. If an Administration cannot gain political legitimacy, it must seek legitimacy of its actions through the production of social benefit. Whether a production of this social benefit consists of protecting and defending a national territory, issuing birth certificates to citizens, regulating road traffic or compiling statistical information on the population, it is sufficient that the society under consideration sees value in this benefit and agrees to pay for its production. Legitimacy for the Administration will therefore lie in justifying its existence by the effective production of this social benefit, and responsibility will consist in giving an accounting of the manner (process) and the means placed at its disposal for the production of this benefit. Inasmuch as the resources placed at the Administration’s disposal for the execution of its social mission are collected from tax-paying citizens, logic would require that the citizens be able to hold the Administration to responsibility. What is in fact happening in Mali?

The only legal document dealing explicitly with the responsibility of the civil Public Administration in Mali is a decree of 1985 which provides that "the chiefs of the central services are interested with directing, programming, facilitating and monitoring the activities of the services placed under their authority and giving an accounting of them to the Minister to whom they are subordinate. In Mali the Administration’s responsibility is expressed in terms of the responsibility of those primarily responsible for the services and directly subordinate to the ministerial level (the upper levels of the Administration) towards the ministers. The implementation of this monitoring is arranged through:

The power of direct nomination and removal of these staff members by the ministers or the proposal made to the Council of Ministers that the staff members should be appointed or removed, when the latter procedure is required by the Constitution or by specific documents;

The powers of change, assignment, evaluation and sanction in the first degree held by the Ministers over the heads of service directly subordinate to their authority;

The power to dismiss staff members and agents which is held by the Minister of Public Services.

In addition, there is an administrative responsibility to the Supreme Court with regard to the management of financial resources and public materials, but this responsibility is poorly exercised by reason of the unduly strong consolidation of public accounts subject to such monitoring and the weakness of the Accounting Section of this Court in human and material resources for the proper exercise of this monitoring.

Instead of being responsible to the taxpayers which provide its resources, the higher echelon of the Public Administration is required to give an accounting to the Minister in charge of human resources for the use of the public staff and to the Supreme Court (Accounting Section) for use of financial and material resources.

The executive staff (intermediary and lower-level) in their turn, are responsible to their hierarchical superiors. We thus arrive at a chain of responsibilities within the public sector. There is no obligation to give an accounting to the clients, which confirms the situation described at the introduction to this document. This situation makes the Malian the Public Administration seem to be a foreign body to its clients, who feel powerless to influence it. Everything has been done as if independence had meant the substitution at a lower level for a foreign Administration, whose colonial practices had continued. The stratagem for which taxpayers in general, and rural taxpayers in particular, are being blamed is in fact a manifestation of their reaction to an Administration which persists in remaining closed to a monitoring by them but asks them to provide ever greater resources for its functioning.

The general demand made at the National Conference for territorial decentralization was in fact a stratagem for circumventing the citizens’ inability to compel the Administration to be accountable for the use it is making of the public resources collected for its functioning. When at least there is decentralization, a citizen has the power and the means to compel the decentralized administrative authorities to give an accounting (election or sanction by refusing to elect or reelect). Furthermore, bringing administrative action closer to the living environment of the people who can see what is being achieved is a source of pressure on the authorities to be accountable. Territorial decentralization is thus seen as an unexpected opportunity for the implementation of administrative accountability.

Territorial decentralization in Mali is being threatened by a number of dangers unless preventive measures are taken and appropriate mechanism are established. In this connexion, we may note the following:

1. The possibility of the regaining of decentralization by the State’s Public Administration in the name of exercising guardianship. Unless care is taken, there is a risk that the State Administration will behave towards the decentralized authorities in the same way as it behaves internally. In doing so, it could, by certain maneuvers, compel the elected authority to be accountable to it rather than to the people. The comparative professional and technical advantage it possesses over the elected authority could help it in this enterprise. Thus, the exercise of guardianship would in many cases end in the involvement, pure and simple, of the guardianship authorities in the day-to-day management of the local communities, and even to their substitution for their decentralization authority;

2. Decentralization is liable to lead to a series of conflicts with regard to responsibility. Being the guardians of the public powers transferred by the State and enjoying legitimacy of popular suffrage, the elected officials of the communities will attempt to demand an accounting from them concerning their activities, unless they can put an end to the power of the customary and traditional authorities which they will find in place. There is a risk of a conflict, since those authorities (customary chiefs, religious, fetishists, etc.) usually render an accounting only to their community and not to the State power. Similarly, the locally elected officials will surely demand an accounting from the representatives of the community-based organizations and NGOs which are or will be operating in the territory of their jurisdiction. These community-based organizations and NGOs (which in principle have an obligation only to their members) have acquired some legitimacy with the population during a number of years when the State did nothing about development in many parts of the Malian territory. Often the people swear only by these community-based organizations and NGOs. They would therefore logically believe that the locally elected representatives owed an accounting to them rather than to anybody else.

It is true that guardianship, properly exercized, would be capable of avoiding certain conflicts between several legitimacies of this type, but it would be inadequate for the solution of numerous problems. Since it is objectively impossible to establish responsibility of the State’s Public Administration towards the citizen in Mali in the immediate future, the path of decentralization is a genuine way to move forward in this area. In view of the constraints identified above, some voluntary action should be carried out in the direction of guardianship, of the elected officials, of the traditional authorities, of the community-based organizations and NGOs, with a view to ensure that the people enjoy the advantages of a free Administration, of the contributions of traditional values as well as the contributions of the community-based organizations and the NGOs. The solutions will vary from one collectivity to another and, in reality, can be properly perceived only when the decentralized organs have been established.

In general, transparency is intimately linked to responsibility. It is, in fact, easy for an individual who exercises supervision over another to demand the desirable degree of transparency. In other words, an institution or person whose action is supervised by or reported to another institution, another service or another person is thus compelled to respect the established standards agreed upon or imposed by the second institution, the second service or the second person.

As applies to the Malian context, one may establish the following logical relationships:

1. The National Assembly can compel the President of the Republic to maintain transparency, under penalty of bringing into play against him the procedure of impeachment for high treason before the High Court of justice, which is in effect an Institution consisting essentially of Deputies;

2. The people can compel the President of the Republic to observe transparency under penalty of refusing to vote for him for a second term;

3. The President of the Republic can demand transparency from the Deputies under penalty of dissolving the National Assembly;

4. The President of the Republic can demand transparency from the Prime Minister and the Ministers. And as presiding officer of the Council of Ministers, which meets once a week, the President of the Republic has a formal framework which enables him to "police" governmental action in the direction of transparency;

5. The National Assembly can overturn a government for opacity by voting a motion of censure.

It can be clearly seen that in this situation there is little place for direct intervention by the citizens, even though they, through their compulsory contributions, enable all these Institutions that form the Malian State to function. This is an inheritance from French constitutionalism applied to a people whose culture demands that its leaders should give a direct accounting to the people, irrespective of their social rank. One of the underlying causes of the revolution of March 1991 was the people’s loss of confidence in their leaders, who, unable to resolve the country’s fundamental problems, including the payment of the salaries of its own employees, had to endure a way of life which was barely within the limits of acceptability. The demand made at the National Conference to "wash everything clean" was the concentrated expression of the feeling of revolt against opacity in the management of public affairs by the highest State authorities under the Second Republic. The Malians’ thirst for transparency led them to include in the Constitution a provision for the effect that the President of the Republic (within 48 hours after his inauguration), the Prime Minister and the Ministers (before entering upon their duties) must submit to the President of the Supreme Court a written declaration of their property, which shall be updated annually (articles 37 and 57). The Constitution goes so far as to specify that the President of the Supreme Court should publicly receive the statement of the property of the President of the Republic. With the view to avoiding a repetition of the events of March 1991, it is imperative that the Institution should agree to open themselves deliberately to the public. What is at stake is social peace and the deepening of the democratic process which is being constructed in the country. This opening may take several forms: public debates, the establishment of press offices in each Institution, in the same way as in the Ministry responsible for the Armed Forces, the publication of detailed and periodic reports, etc. The present programme could support these activities and efforts aimed at transparency.

On the basis of the direction of responsibility, it is the duty of each Minister to guarantee and ensure transparency in the activities of the authorities of the upper levels of the Administration that are accountable to him. The heads of services should, in turn, supervise and maintain transparency on the part of the Executive Administration. Thus, we have a one-way cycle of transparency, internal to the Administration, whose implementation consists of formal and structured types of monitoring (hierarchal monitoring exercised by superiors over their subordinates, monitoring carried out by the specialized Ministerial Inspections on behalf of the Ministers over the services placed under their authority, monitoring carried on by the General Control of the State). By virtue of the fact that most of the country’s resources are placed at the disposal of the Public Administration for its operation, the execution of missions and implementation works of general interest, the problem of transparency takes on a special dimension in this case. It is concerned simultaneously with the system of determining the needs for resources that must be disbursed by the citizens, the manner in which the resources are utilized, the quantity and the quality of the property acquired with those resources, the process of the production of administrative action, etc. One can reasonably understand that taxpayers are therefore not satisfied with simple mechanisms which provide "administrativo-administrative" monitoring, the practice of which has demonstrated the inadequacies and gaps which in Mali include:

The confidentiality of the results of the monitoring measures, the exploitation of which and the implementation of whose results depend on the disposition and good faith of the authority for which they are destined;

The predominance of interpersonal relations in the Administration and the intervention practiced in all areas both by politicians and higher officials and by society;

The impunity of instances of deviant behaviour, even in the case of economic scandals;

The preeminence of secrecy in the Public Administration.

These gaps, inadequacies and practices and the opacity of the Public Administration which results from them have in the end brought a deterioration in the relationships between the Administration and its clients, who have responded by a generalized absence of civic interest. By refusing to fulfil his tax obligations, a citizen manifests his wish to compel the Public Administration to give him an accounting of the use it is making of the resources placed at its disposal and of the process of administrative production. This desire has been expressed openly at the National Conference, which called for "a cleanup of the Malian Administration". In the meantime, the participants in the Conference demanded the implementation of territorial decentralization, which would in their view represent the best way to ensure transparency in administrative action by introducing into the Public Administration the election of administrative agents by the constituents, who thus become genuine citizens and authorities capable of sanctions.

Moreover, the integral multipartite system, the proliferation of associations, the freedom of the press, the fundamental guarantees granted to citizens by the Constitution and specific statutes enable them today to exercise strong pressure on the Public Administration. This pressure compels the Malian Administration and the public powers on which it depends to adopt an attitude of free consent towards transparency as concerns its constituents. As was the case in many western countries, this action consists in having concerned parties take part in the process of administrative decision-making whenever possible. Thus, the files submitted to the Council of Ministers include "elements of participation" in which the Minister who submits a file adopted by the government must indicate the list of components of civil society that have been consulted and/or have participated in the preparation of his draft file. By placing the files "under the eyes" of the concerned parties, the Malian Executive branch provides them with "informational resources" of which they can take advantage, while it works together with them to weave a new "mode of relationships".

For the same reasons, the State’s Public Administration is coming closer and closer to its clients by providing them with information and by disseminating its actions through the production of surveys, the preparation and dissemination of sketches broadcast over radio and television, the organizing of workshops and seminars for information and exchange, the simplification of its procedures and formalities, etc. Beyond this positive step, the Institution of the Mediator of the Republic (Act #97-022 of 14 March 1997), whose mission is to compel the Malian Administration to function in conformity with generally accepted and universal rules, is an additional guarantee of the transparency of administrative action. Lastly, Act #98-012 of 19 January 1998 governing the relations between the Administration and the clients of public services shares in this new trend towards general transparency in the public sector with regard to the public. To achieve this end, the Act guarantees client access to public services, requires the decision-making public agent to provide written reasons for all his decisions that are unfavorable to clients, guarantees the client access to the administrative documents other than those pertaining to appointments, restricts the area of secrecy in the Administration, compels the Administration to publish its actions and give correct information to its clients, imposes time limits for replying to the questions asked by clients.

This is indeed an essential document, whose implementation will, at the formal level, bring about administrative transparency in Mali towards its citizens. Indeed, administrative secrecy was until the time of this Act a golden rule, and even may be called the Administration’s principle of operation. It is largely on the basis of opacity that the public sector in Mali is being criticized. To convince oneself, one need only recall the provisions of Article 15 of the General Regulations for Civil Servants which reads as follows:

Apart from the case as is explicitly provided by the regulations now in force, a civil servant may not be relieved of the prohibitions contained in the preceding paragraphs except with the prior consent of the authority to which he is subordinate." No comment!

All current efforts are aimed at improving the relations between the Administration and its clients. But unless care is taken, they will not result in the desired transparency, because if one looks at them closely, they contain many elements for justifying administrative action, i.e. elements of propaganda and promotion of the Administration.

The new opportunities offered to the clients of the public service who are better informed about the matter and are in possession of institutional and legal instruments (the Mediator of the Republic and the charter of Administration-Client relations) will be of no benefit to them unless they have the ability to put them to good use. It is best to point out that the Public Administration will never go to the extent of exposing to the public "the hidden side of its operations" to the extent that secrecy forms part of its system of gaining and retaining power. There is also the risk that it will complicate its procedures in order to discourage clients who would like to put it under transparent glass in order to observe it. One may also wonder what real sense there is to publishing in French a document or an administrative paper among a population whose rate of illiteracy is one of the highest in the world (about 70%). If it is assumed that no one is ignorant of the law, the law must be placed in a receptacle accessible to everyone. This is where we find the problem of the strengthening of the abilities of the citizens of society in general, which is an important elements of governance, and of the promotion of literacy among the population. The present programme must, in addition to supporting the Mediator of the Republic, include an important element designed to strengthen the civil society’s capacity to compel the Public Administration to maintain transparency in its everyday activity. The existence of an investigative press is likely to promote monitoring of the Administration by the people. Consequently, the private press should receive financial and material direct support as well as training in investigative techniques, in order to compel the Administration to maintain transparency. In Mali the proliferation of press associations and organs has not coincided with their capacity to fulfil the missions which citizens expected of them, by reason of their special weakness in resources of all kinds. Communication is a necessary condition for transparency in the public sector, in the sense that information in itself is a weapon that can be used in various ways. The programme should therefore include a strategy and plans for communication both within the Administration and between the Administration and its clients.

3. Transparency in the Justice System

The concern for the independence of the Justice System which is expressed in the Constitution, and the use through which the Judicial System puts that independence today prevent the citizen from compelling the judicial apparatus to maintain transparency. It is desirable that Judicial Institutions and magistrates should adopt the same attitude of free consent that was described above in connexion with the Public Administration. One may hope that they will proceed to do this by reason of the very fact that the magistrates are currently subjected to verbal and physical attacks by those brought before them. Indeed, in the face of opacity of judicial procedures, the behaviour of certain magistrates, the unfairness of certain judgements, some people today are often attacking magistrates verbally, or even physically, and often force them to abandon their home grounds. It appears that the Higher Council of the Magistracy is unable to fulfil properly its role of disciplining magistrates, even though it is presided over by the President of the Republic. The notorious "secrecy of the investigation" cited by magistrates to cover up their actions no longer convinces the citizens, inasmuch as it is not always used to guarantee investigations and protect individual freedoms. It is being perceived more and more widely by Malians as an alibi invoked by the Judicial System to protect itself against public view. The gulf that separates the Judicial System of Mali from those brought before it is so wide and deep that it constitutes a genuine danger to democracy. The Ministry of Justice seems to have recognized this danger when it established an organ responsible for preparing a specific programme, which will, one may hope, understand the popular concern with a much-needed opening of the Judicial System to the public.

As a contribution to the debates provided for at this level, one may propose, contrary to our French heritage in this area, that certain magistrates should be elected, in this case those of the Courts of Appeals, who deal with the decisions rended by lower-level tribunals and are therefore witnesses of the quality of the lower-level judges. One may also envision the election of magistrates of the Supreme Court, which is the Constitutional Institution of judicial power best placed for informing citizens of the functioning of the judicial apparatus.

If there exists an Institution that needs direct legitimacy from the citizens, it is certainly the Constitutional Court, by virtue of its missions. At present it consists of nine members, at least seven of whom must be jurists, whereas the material it deals with is not exclusively juridical. Thus it seems easy to forget that it "is the organ which regulates the function of the Institutions and the activity of the public powers".

Studies and debates on the role and the methods of action of this Institution, as well as the mechanisms of its collaboration with the other Institutions, specifically the Government and the Public Administration;

Support for the installation, equipping and functioning of the Mediator of the Republic and for the publication of his reports.

Study of the strengths and limitations of the mechanisms of responsibility implementation of the Government by the National Assembly;

Study of the means by which the Government could voluntarily open itself to the public.

Study on the role that the traditional authorities could be made to play within the framework of the moralization of public life;

Strengthening of the capacities of the National Assembly to gain a better understanding of the bills it votes on and to monitor governmental actions;

Strengthening the capacities of Deputies to initiate bills;

Assistance to the National Assembly for the establishment of a documentary fund.

Strengthening of the capacities and the human and material resources of the Judicial Power;

Studies for the adaptation of law to the political, economic and socio-cultural context of the country and its international environment;

Studies and debates on the possibility of electing certain magistrates;

Decentralization of the judicial apparatus;

Dissemination of the law.

Financial, material and technical support.

Financial, material, technical and methodological support.

Item A. 1.1.g At the level of the Supreme Council of Local Authorities

Training of the members of the Supreme Council of Local Authorities;

Support for the establishment of the Supreme Council of Local Authorities.

Support for the organizations of the clients of the Administration;

Civic training;

Promotion of literacy among the population;

Support for the press;

Support for communication within and outside of the Administration.

These various proposals are summarized in the following table.