January 30, 2006	Monday	Zilhaj 29, 1426

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ISLAMABAD, Jan 29: Well-organized political parties and trained political activists are vital to continuity and stability of democracy in a country, said Tony Worthington, former Labour Party member of the British parliament.

He was speaking as guest speaker at an interactive roundtable discussion on “Implementing intra-party democracy - the Labour Party experience” at the Central Secretariat of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). The programme was organized by the National Democratic Institute in collaboration with the Centre for Civic Education as part of its USAID-funded political party development programme.

Mr Worthington said good political parties had internal democratic procedures, convincing policies, and they communicated with the people and the party members adhering to internal discipline.

Sharing his party’s experience with the PML-N leaders, Mr Worthington said the Labour Party members were inherent believers in the virtues of democracy and the rights of the poor and disadvantaged. In recent times, it has tried various ways of refocussing its democracy and has adjusted the working of its democracy to try to improve party management.

He said developments in communications have thrown up great challenges to the skills of political parties like 24-hour journalism, intensified communication between the elected members and their constituents through newsletters and e-mails.

Policy-making has become much more complicated because of the ‘end of ideology’ in politics. He said parties needed to develop a cohesive framework for policy - a set of values - so that people knew what they stood for. “If this is not done, it leaves the ground clear for parties to be based on other foundations such as ethnicity, religions, “the big man”, a single issue and financial power, etc.

Each of these alternatives throw up their own problems in building up effective, sustainable, inclusive democracies”, he added.

About Labour Party policy making procedure, he said eight policy commissions covered different aspects of policy such as welfare, health, crime and justice and Britain in the world.