Dear Friends,
Let me begin by thanking in your name our host, President Macky Sall, his colleagues and the people of Senegal for their hospitality and welcome.
I am honoured to have been elected today in Dakar, in Senegal, a country which is both brother and friend.
You have today elected me as President of Liberal International.
I know that it is a first after 71 years of the existence of our Federation to have elected a non-European president, who is African, Arab, Muslim and who is on top of that a woman!
I relied on the totality of votes of our African Liberal Network ALN, which has always supported me and with whom I have always worked, and the voices of the women, my friends of the INLW, but this evening my emotion and joy are even greater:
You have all, unanimously, voted for me.
You have had confidence in me.
Thank you my friends for this honour.
Thank you for the honour you have given me, my party, the Mouvement Populaire; my country, Morocco; and also to my Continent, Africa.
I shall do everything in my power to be worthy.
I would like to tell you how proud I am to belong to this family, for whom the equality of luck and opportunity are not just pious wishes but a reality which applies to all of our members, whatever their origins, religions or gender.
This evening I also bow with a great deal of humility before the achievements of all my predecessors and I would especially wish to salute the work of my friend President Juli Minoves – thank you Juli for the rigour of your work, your diplomacy and your support and I count on you to continue together what you have started – the launching of the Manifesto.
Hans van Baalen: Hans, you are my mentor, my school and your unfailing support gives me the courage and strength to be ambitious.
Thanks to all my friends on the outgoing Bureau for support and accompaniment.
I look with pleasure to working with those among you who have been re-elected this evening and I congratulate the newcomers to the Bureau.
I wish also to thank the Secretary General of my Party, the Mouvement Populaire, a Party which has always claimed to be liberal, a Party which has played a dominant role in the promulgation of the first legal text on public liberty in Morocco in 1958 and which has always fought against social divisions and exclusion.
My thanks to Margaret, the President, and the members of the Bureau of INLW, who also nominated me. This nomination honours me.
I would like to pay homage to all those women and all those men who have paid with their liberty (and I think strongly about Senator de Lima) who pay with their lives to defend our common causes.
But let me tell you that without one person I would never have had the courage to be here this evening. Emil. Thank you, Emil, for your confidence and thank you for giving me the courage to say yes.
Dear Friends,
During the mandate of president Juli Minoves we adopted the Andorra Manifesto. This has expanded our battle for social rights.
Today this Manifesto places human dignity as the pillar of liberal action and my priority as president is to put this it into reality.
The Manifesto must become a reality in the daily lives of our citizens.
A strong and audible reality against the threats which weigh on our liberty and private lives.
A reality where together we will overcome poverty, exclusion, insecurity and the fight against climate change.
A reality which will allow us to counter the populism and the growing nationalist theses, which create divisions on the basis of colour, religion and the rights of blood or soil, divide us and bring about protectionism and sometimes leads us through verbal violence into physical violence.
The build-up of the populists MUST CEASE to stop the rich being pitted against the poor, the elites and the bosses against the workers, Muslims and Jews against Christians, migrants against the inhabitants of the country.
Populism can only be wiped out through development and progress. Progress in respect of laws and human rights.
PROGRESS FOR ALL. Because inequality linked to a lack of education, unemployment, injustice or even to insecurity is a destructive cocktail which greatly assists the populists on their way to power.
That is why this Congress of 4.0 Liberalism must be the one which puts into effect the Andorra Liberal Manifesto which puts mankind and dignity at the heart of its Strategy.
To this end I invite you to work together on the 5 priority paths
Priority 1. Education
We all know that education is at the heart of development.
If we want more democratic countries, we need more enlightened individuals
If we want prosperous countries, we need well trained citizens
And if we want to disarm the populists we must arm the people… a liberal education can be a powerful weapon
We must reinvent an educational system holding on to, and implementing, our values while taking into account the digital revolution.
Priority 2. Climate Justice
We have created the first coalition of political parties for climate justice in the world.
Our goal is to participate in ending thirst (2.1 billion people), hunger and malnutrition (821 million) and energy poverty (1.1 billion people)
As part of our Climate Justice Committee we will focus on climate justice and women. In Southern Countries women represent between 40% and 50% of the workforce. They fetch water, produce food and guarantee food security. But when natural disasters occur, 80% of the victims are women and it is these same women who have no access to land, to funding, and to capacity building
Climate Justice will allow us to alleviate many of the evils that cause poverty, exclusion, unemployment, migration, insecurity and [threaten] peace: yes, peace, because we cannot fight obscurantism in the dark.
Priority 3. Migration
This is a subject widely discussed by countries of the North and the South.
The answers, whatever they are, cannot be one sided, partial, nor is insecurity the case in all countries of original migrants
War, instability, poverty, unemployment, climate change: each cocktail produces a different migratory flow and requires a specific and concerted response
The question is sensitive but I propose that we deal with it and provide answers to help decision making in both countries of origin and those asked to host migrants.
Priority 4. International Trade and Fair Trade
Trade is central to ending global poverty. Countries which are open to international trade tend to grow faster, innovate, improve productivity and provide higher income and more opportunities for their people
We should work to ensure that trade is providing jobs and benefits the poor, and that the world is doing what is necessary to bring low-income countries into the global trading system on a fair basis.
Having clarified these priorities it goes without saying that I shall maintain strongly our Human Rights Committee, the guardians of our values, and congratulate them on their excellent performance on which I rely to continue our fight for respect of freedoms, the reinforcing of democratic institutions and the expansion of the values of peace and tolerance in the world.
Priority 5. Opening and spreading of Liberal International
Dear Friends, an organisation is strong through its members and its partners, which is why I would like to be able for the fifth pillar, which I propose to you, that is the greater extension of the network of Liberal International and the greater dissemination of the values we stand for, and to continue the work of our past Presidents, Juli and Hans.
That is:
We already have excellent partners such as FNF and I am delighted that the chairman of FNF is the new Deputy President of LI and I have to tell you how honoured I am to work with Karl-Heinz Paqué, a man I hold in high esteem and with whom I have shared priorities.
The development of partnerships, the use of our networks with phased planning together with our various Asian, African, Arab, European and Latin American parties, and the youth and the women organisations will allow us to diffuse our activities in both convergent, visible and thus more audible ways.
Dear Friends,
We are perhaps not a perfect Federation.
None of our Parties are perfect.
Perhaps I am not a perfect President.
But we have vowed to undertake a perfect mission.
Let us continue to build a strong Liberal International which forms part of the lives of our citizens.
Let us not close our eyes to practices which do not match our values.
Open them wide and channel our beliefs to act and bring about change.
Let us create the faces of Liberalism in all continents, in all countries, in all parties.
Raise our voices so that they drown out those of the populists and tell the citizens of the world that is with us, armed with our values and through our work, that they will obtain their dignity.
Together, with our different origins, our different points of reference, let us build bridges between the North and the South, the East and the West, and link them through flows of tolerance, of justice, and of peace and progress for all.
Finally, my dear colleagues, let us pay homage to our most recent President; thank you Juli for joining me.
Juli, you have released a historic task in completing the new Liberal International manifesto. I want the history of LI to remember you.
And I propose that the Congress delegates acclaim you as a President of Honour of Liberal International.