Official opening of Seventh Governance and Political Management Program

(Lima, June 08, 2009).- With the purpose of strengthening the training of public officials and civil society players in handling complex problems when structural changes are implemented in their communities and countries, the Seventh Governance and Political Management Program was officially opened today. This program is the product of an agreement between the Andean Development Corporation (CAF), George Washington University, and the Master’s in Political Science at the Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP).

The event was chaired by Eleonora Silva Pardo, CAF’s director in Peru; Henry Pease García, the director of the School of Government and Public Policies at the PUCP; Ismael Muñoz, the coordinator of Governance and Political Management in Peru; and Javier Iguiñiz Echeverría, senior professor of the Department of Economics at the PUCP, who gave the master conference, “The current crisis and challenges for governance and public policies.”

During the opening event, Eleonora Silva highlighted that the purpose of the program was to offer a comprehensive view of economic and social development problems and training in how to materialize this vision in a coordinated framework of action that has technical elements and is politically, economically, and socially viable.

She commented that CAF has been implementing this program since 2001 in alliance with George Washington University and local universities in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Panama, and Venezuela, performing its training activities with a critical mass of public officials in the region. The training course lasts six months to a year and, to date, has more than 5,000 graduates throughout the region.

CAF’s director also highlighted that the Seventh Governance and Political Management Program in Peru will invite 450 participants this year and indicated that, as a critical mass of players with capacity to settle disputes and generate consensuses is formed, not only will institutional development be strengthened, but countries’ degrees of governance will also be improved.

“The Governance Program, successfully implemented in Andean countries as well as in Argentina, Panama, and Mexico, is a CAF initiative that seeks to put future social and political players on the right track through adequate training, inculcating the importance of recognizing and consolidating a comprehensive vision of handling political, economic, and social issues, strategic communication, and effective leadership,” she said.