Composition
There are currently 89 full Members, all of them previous government officials who have full voting rights. The Club also has institutional Members –those who belong to private and public organizations that share similar democratic objectives, including the Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior (FRIDE), and the Gorbachev Foundation of North America (GNFA), both original sponsors of the founding conference in 2001. Additionally, the Club de Madrid has several honorary Members, such as Kofi Annan and Aung San Suu Kyi; and fellows, who are experts on democratic changeover.
The Club is based in Madrid (Spain), although meetings are held worldwide. Currently Wim Kok, the former Prime Minister of The Netherlands (1994–2002), is the organization's President, and it also has two Vice Presidents: Jennifer Shipley (New Zealand) and César Gaviria (Colombia).
- President - Wim Kok
- Vice President - Jennifer Shipley
- Vice President - César Gaviria
The Club was created from an unprecedented event that was held in October 2001 in Madrid, a four day Conference on Democratic Transition and Consolidation (CDTC). This event brought together 35 world leaders, over 100 esteemed academics and policy specialists from Europe, The Americas, Asia, and Africa to discuss ideas and means of implementation from both objective and subjective perspectives. The conference discussed eight main topics:
- Constitutional design
- The Legislative branch and its relation with the Executive branch
- The Judicial branch and its relation with Executive branch
- Anti-corruption procedures
- The role of the armed forces and security forces
- Reform of the state bureaucracy
- Strengthening of political and social pluralism and of political parties
- Economic and social conditions.
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Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“It is my PRIDE, my damn’d, native, unconquerable Pride, that plunges me into Distraction. You must know that 19-20th of my Composition is Pride. I must either live a Slave, a Servant; to have no Will of my own, no Sentiments of my own which I may freely declare as such;Mor DIE—perplexing alternative!”
—Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770)
“Pushkin’s composition is first of all and above all a phenomenon of style, and it is from this flowered rim that I have surveyed its seep of Arcadian country, the serpentine gleam of its imported brooks, the miniature blizzards imprisoned in round crystal, and the many-hued levels of literary parody blending in the melting distance.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)