GOLD Report I - UCLG

MIDDLE EAST / WESTERN ASIA210United Cities and Local Governments21. Law no. 5393.22. ELISSAR SARROUH,DecentralizedGovernance forDevelopment in theArab States, reportpresented duringthe forum ongovernance in theArab states, Sana’a,6-9 September2003.Turkey since the Ottoman Empire. Theyare very similar to the Lebanese mokhtar.The role of these local community leaderswas made official by Article 9 of the newmunicipal law. 21 This law gives them officialfunctions, notably in the field of the registrationof births, marriages, and deaths,and in tax collection. In addition, theyensure contact with the municipality andrepresent their local community area onthe ‘town councils’ by passing on therequests and comments of the people fromtheir administrative area. Introduced bythe new municipal law, the “city council”–kent konseyi– is a consultative institution,an outcome brought by the success ofthe Turkey Local Agenda 21 Program. Thisconstitutes a unique mechanism of governancein Turkey that brings together thecentral government, local government andcivil society within a framework of partnership.In general, this participatorymechanism encompasses a broad spectrumof local stakeholders, representativesof working groups, neighborhood committees,women and youth councils.In other countries, however, authoritiesworking in parallel with the municipalcouncil can represent an important oppositionforce in the hands of the central government,particularly when they have thepotential to report on and perhaps slowdown the work of the municipal councils. Itis this second situation which applies forthe Syrian ‘popular organizations,’ whichrepresent various socio-professional categories,such as manual workers, farmers,and women, and which must make up atleast 60% of local councils. Furthermore,their elected representatives, even thosenot on the municipal council, have the rightto monitor their activities.b) The weight of the politicaland social systemThe report of the United Nations DevelopmentProgramme (UNDP) indicates that“the progress in the field of decentralizationin the Arab countries has been veryslow, particularly because of the unevenlevel of involvement in decentralizing reforms.”22 In fact, it is difficult not to see inthe persistent strong centralization a reluctanceon the part of the governments ofthe region to accept local governance andthe independence inherent therein.The refusal of a loss of sovereignty. Themain reason for government distrust of localgovernance is fear of a loss of sovereignty.Excluding Turkey, where powerbelongs to the institutions, governing traditionis based on the personal exercise ofpower, with the government, on its owninitiative, delegating a part to people of itsown choice. Given this context, to put inplace real decentralization would require acomplete overhaul of state structures,beginning in some cases with a separationof powers and election of legislative bodiesby universal suffrage.In the particular case of Lebanon, whichnevertheless satisfies these conditions, theonly area of agreement of the traditionalcommunity leaders is their wish to put abrake on the resumption of municipal governance.In fact, they consider local municipalauthorities to be usurping some oftheir prerogatives. They seem to believethat municipal authorities are only intendedto provide services for their supportersin exchange for their votes. This viciouscircle keeps the local councils in a state oflethargy. Members of parliament, who arethemselves traditional leaders or who oweallegiance to them, use their legislativeposition to gradually weaken the power ofthe municipalities.This analysis is equally valid for those stateswhere members of the ruling families,or those of a political party, or of a dominantmovement have all the power.The security factor. The other factor whichhinders the decentralization of the states issecurity. Some large fault-lines cross theregion, the main one being the communityorganization. In fact, the risk of subversion is