Benin report - Institut Africain de la Gouvernance

CHAPTER THREE: DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL GOVERNANCE__________________________________________________________________________150. Political parties are recognised by the constitution. They are governed by lawssuch as the Charter of Political Parties, of 21 February 2001, and the Statute ofthe Opposition, of 23 November 2001, which gives a framework for theorganisation and activities of opposition parties. The opposition comprises allparties, party alliances or groups of political parties that have opinions thatdiffer from those of the ruling party. They may express their ideas inanticipation of a democratic change of power.151. This body of legislation led to the creation of many political parties – indeed,there are more than 150 officially registered parties. However, theproliferation of political parties has caused democratic dysfunction.Stakeholders have identified and even denounced many flaws in the partysystem: fictitious membership, lack of credibility of parties, lack of convictionand manifestos, strong ethnocentric and regionalist leanings of politicalparties, and the existence of many insignificant parties that are only driven byselfish ambitions. The issue of political „migration‟ should also be condemned,as should the absence of internal democracy. The same goes for the secretfinancing of parties and their campaigns, the politicisation of publicadministration, moneymaking and corruption, among others.152. Political parties that meet the conditions to operate and have at least one MPreceive financial aid from the state. However, the absence of systems forpublic financing and control of party expenditure hampers the efficiency ofthe democratic process. Indeed, there is a drift towards the „privatisation‟ ofthe wealthier parties. This has led to many calls for government to strengthenthe legal framework, to apply the provisions of the Charter of Political Partiesstrictly, and to sanction political parties that do not adhere to the regulations.This would drastically reduce the number of political parties.Box 3.2: The Charter of Political Parties: a suitable but ineffective legal frameworkAlthough Article 5 of the constitution states that “Political parties shall contribute to the votingprocess, they shall be formed and shall exercise their activities freely per the terms of theCharter of Political Parties”, it is the legislators who have the duty to organise the formalframework within which political parties can operate.In 1990, the first Charter of Political Parties (law 90-023 of 13 August 1990) provided forpolitical pluralism in accordance with the multiparty system. However, promoters of politicalparties do not always respect the required standards, and this results in the currentproliferation of parties that operate outside the law.Drawing lessons from the anarchical and cacophonous development of the partisan system,the public authorities reformulated the Charter of Political Parties through Law 2001-21 ofFebruary 2001.This law defines political parties as groups of citizens trained to promote and defend theirplans for society and political programmes in terms of the constitution of 11 December 1990(Article 2). The law assigns to them a clearly defined responsibility.The Charter of Political Parties compels all parties to have manifestos (Article 4) and to play arole in political life. To this end, “parties or groups of political parties may express theiropinions on any issue of local, national or international interest” (Article 11). Among others,78