Speaking on the sixth day of the Second Century Economics Congress, economist, planning expert and politician Murat Karayalçın presented a new proposal. Emphasizing the necessity of the public’s participation and ownership in the project processes as guards, Karayalçın said, “If the project can be embraced, the project can be completed quickly. Project guardians are the people who want that project to be realized as soon as possible.”
On the sixth day of the Second Century Economics Congress, which called on all of Turkey to build the future with the slogan of “Invitation to Innovation” by the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality, he served as the minister of state, the ministry of foreign affairs, the deputy prime minister and the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality. Murat Karayalçın, a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Board, also spoke. Economist, planning expert and politician Karayalçın made statements under the title of “Project Ownership”.
“Every project of the public has the aim of serving the society”
As he started his speech, Karayalçın said, “I would like to propose a new project model for the fixed social-based projects of the state, public legal entities and our municipalities” and said, “I call both the state and the municipality ‘public’. It should jointly design and implement its fixed social-based projects with the target audience of those projects, that is, with the people of the project. For this, the project population, which is the target audience, should be organized no matter what, preferably in the form of cooperatives and engage in an organized dialogue with the public. The dialogue should be held in the project decision boards, in which the representatives of the public and the people of the project, the representatives of the municipality or the ministry will take place in equal numbers. Organized dialogue will take the form of negotiation and decision-making. Negotiation will take place. Then a joint decision will be taken based on it. Equally. The public no more. The representatives of the public and the public will take decisions in consensus and equally. This is a public-public cooperation model. The cooperation of the public and the public may be limited to the duration of that project. Only the public and the public can cooperate in the design and implementation of that project. This model will provide social feasibility and social legitimacy as well as the technical and economic feasibility that every project should have. We have to care about the social legitimacy of the projects. The project can be completed quickly. The inability to complete the projects quickly is not only due to the inadequacy of the allocated appropriations. If the project can be owned, that project can be completed quickly. In order to ensure the gains of the project as soon as possible, the people of the project will own the project and will be the guardians of that project. It will transform into the form of project guardians and create great project energy. We need project guards. Project guards are not municipal or ministries’ technicians. Project guardians are the people who want that project to happen as soon as possible. The public should be made the guardian of the project,” he said.
“Democracy should be everywhere”
Saying that another gain of this model will be the democracy it will create, Karayalçın concluded his speech as follows:
“Even if it is limited to a project implementation area, thinking, designing, negotiating and implementing it together will bring along a new understanding of democracy. In fact, this is a new understanding of public administration. I call it project democracy. Democracy should not be only in the parliament, nor in political parties. Democracy should be everywhere. There should be democracy in every process, especially in the production process. This is not participation. This is a stage far beyond participation. In participation, central and local administrators listen to the people, but they may or may not do what they say. In participation, the public should be given the opportunity to present their views. Those views may seem valid, they may not. But this model is not like that. I call this model cooperation, not participation.” .
Source: (BYZHA) – Beyaz News Agency
