Leadership, the global financial crisis, inequality, unemployment, transparency, social discontent, regulating the financial economy, populism and changing political tendencies. This is a concise overview of the topics featured in our interview with former President of the Dominican Republic and Member of World Leadership Alliance – Club de Madrid (WLA – CdM), Leonel Fernández.
Lacking solutions? They are also part of the interview: Trust in democracy and a call to action for political participation addressed to younger generation. Mr. Fernández soundly advocates for democracy as “the only guarantee of dignity, fundamental rights and the creation of opportunities” and believes that knowledge and ideas are our most important drivers to seek solutions. Here is where WLA – CdM can make a clear impact by congregating leaders from every continent and working towards more effective democracies. This effort requires some essential guidelines: “Equality and inclusion“, according to Mr Fernández, which are “two key concepts to understand democracy in the 21st Century”.
In the interview, Mr Fernández makes an assessment of recent events which affected democratic development in his region, Latin America. Furthermore, he connects the regional with the global by analyzing how the financial crisis disturbed Latin America’s economy and, by extension, the quality of its democracies. Therefore, the interview also contains a well founded analysis of the global financial crisis and Mr Fernandez’s solution to the profound inequality inherited from the economic turbulences. “Fiscal policy should distribute the capital generated during the process of productions”, says the former President of the Dominican Republic, who believes that capitalism nowadays concentrates a great amount of capital in few hands.
You can watch the interview (in Spanish) here.
You can read more details about Mr Fernandez’s biography in our website.