09/14/2009

Westerwelle: Local Autonomy holds the Aces for Democracy

A few months before the local elections in Korea the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty invited ten city councilors to a study tour to Germany. The objective of the study tour was to increase awareness of political participation i.e. in election campaigns and its importance for a functioning democratic society. Furthermore the tour aimed for showing possibilities of a financially beneficial local and regional cooperation.

After a meeting with the Minister of Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia, Ingo Wolf ("democracy needs time"), the participants agreed on the necessity to promote a politically more decentralized system in South Korea and to focus more on local taxes and a financial equalization apportionment system. Korea still remains fiscally a quite centralized country and most of the local expenditures are funded by central government which still shows some reluctance to truly local autonomy. In the context of the intended territorial reform in South Korea the delegation learned about the German experience and admitted that this kind of reforms are no vote winner since they are primarily perceived as a “red herring” and as party politics driven reforms.

After the theoretical lectures the participants had the opportunity to watch the political campaign first hand and to get to know the importance of political platforms to compete for the vote of the electorate. At an information desk in the pedestrian precinct of Bonn they met and discussed with the President of the Free Democratic Party and the opposition leader in National Parliament Guido Westerwelle. He stressed the need to increase the voter turnout in order to reach a broader democratic legitimacy. “Local autonomy holds all the aces for democracy, welfare and economic development.”

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