Report by Grigory Yavlinsky
Forum 2000, Prague, September 16, 2013
It is a great privilege to be on the panel with such [high level] speakers [as Nobel Prize winners]. That is why I want to simply follow and to develop what has been said before.
I would like to tell you that I think that good governance depends on all of us very much. Without us good governance is simply not possible. We are responsible for the good governance in our countries. You can not take good governance for granted.

But what are the preconditions for good governance? From my point of view, the main precondition for good governance is strong public control. We should lead governments and governance to real transparency. Under good governance I mean implementing decisions. I have no doubt that this depends more on institutions, rather than leaders, even if you have wonderful leaders. And that also depends on us, as we as the people create real procedures and institutions in politics and economy. This is the task for the nation if the nation really wants to have good governance, as decision making very much depends on the leaders which we have. But from my point of view, we can have very clear criteria for choosing a leader who could ensure good governance.

In addition different qualities he or she must be the person with a [strategic] vision. I am afraid that very often in the modern world we forget about this. We forget that the main quality for good governance is the vision and also I would like to add here, this vision should be based on truth. Which is not what we can often find at the moment.

And certainly we can see that every century had different criteria for what good governance should be. There were such periods of time in the history of the mankind when good governance meant an enlightened monarchy, and people were very happy to have enlightened monarchs. But I think that in the 21st century any kind of debate or discussion about good governance without real genuine democracy is simply senseless, that is why I would like to underline that the criteria of the 21st century for good governance are human dignity and human freedom. The more freedom there is, the better is the governance. The more human dignity we observe in the country, the better is the governance. And that is comparatively easy to understand because the 21st century is the century of creativity, which means that this is the century of free people, and respect to the people and their dignity – this may be the main feature in the 21st century of good governance.

And once again it very much depends on how we take part in the elections, what kind of choices we do, how politically active we are and how active we are in creating good governance in our countries.

Thank you!
Applause.