The importance of decentralization
On April 21, the forum “Cuenca / Its Governments: Institutionality of the Subnational Governments Model” was held, organized by the Institute of Sectional Regime Studies of Ecuador (IERSE) of the University of Azuay.
The moderator of the event was María Cecilia Alvarado and the four speakers: Magaly Quezada, Juanita Bersosa, Edison Mafla and Braulio Vásquez.
"The bicentennial is also the occasion to think about what has happened to us in these 200 years and in this case to focus on the government, on the institutions, and how we can advance towards these changes that the institutionality requires to improve decentralization," said Alvarado.
This forum is part of a cycle of four events -two forums and two workshops- that take place in the bicentennial framework of the city, and its objective was to analyze the changes required by the current model of subnational governments to balance the relations of the territories. urban and rural.
Magali Quezada, Vice Prefect of Azuay, said that the Constitution prepared in 2008 "was a positive process because it established exclusive powers that were generated for prefectures, municipalities and parish councils."
On the other hand, Juanita Bersosa mentioned that: “In the planning model, decentralization should be emphasized, which is one of the pillars in which we have a whole series of instruments that are built from the top down, it would be important to redefine the model, build from the territory to rethink the guarantee of rights from the needs ”.
Edison Mafla said, for his part, that "a comprehensive system is necessary that allows intersectorality and the exercise of a national and local public policy that is developed to maintain principles of equality, equity and diversity in the territory."
Finally, Braulio Vásquez recalled that "decentralization is not a new issue in his region, as it is an issue that has been approached in different ways at different stages."
The international speaker said that in the period 2005 to 2015 “a decentralization policy began to emerge in some of the Central American countries to begin to give the necessary orientation to the process, it is there that a centralization model begins to be built and shaped. that now has a political and legal framework to be able to carry out these processes ”.
To conclude, the Executive Director of IERSE, Omar Delgado, thanked all the participants on behalf of the entire University of Azuay and stated that these spaces actually contribute a lot to reflection and above all to be marked spaces for reflection and that allow us to really contribute to build better spaces.
UDA Correspondent
