Workshop
Details
Konrad Adenauer Stiftung - Regional Programme for Australia and the Pacific (KAS Australia) was pleased to kick off the second iteration of its workshops on political parties and democracy in the Pacific region this year. Held by Dr Wilhelm Hofmeister – Lecturer at the Institute of Social Sciences and Fellow of the Party Research Institute of the University of Duesseldorf, the first round of workshops took place in Apia.
Themed "Democracy or Authoritarianism: The New Global Competition between Political Systems from a European Perspective”, the workshops were aimed at civil society at large and attracted participants from the Samoa Umbrella Organisation of NGOs (SUNGO), the Samoa and Tokelau Association of Recyclers (STAR), and representatives from the media as well as the business sector.
The German Honorary Consul, Stefan Szegedi, was also in attendance, as were 2 scholars from the University of the South Pacific (USP) in Suva. The topics ranged from the history of democracy to threats to modern democracy and political parties (eg corruption, populism). The participants inter alia developed strategies for their respective organisations using the SWOT analysis. They also discussed the role that articifial intelligence might play in their future work. The expert emphasized the importance of civil society organisations for any democracy, and acknowledged there was no one size fits all.
The workshops in Apia coincided with both the general elections in Germany and a vote of no confidence against Prime Minister of Samoa, both essential elements of any democracy.