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September 9 2014 09:30 | Karel de Grote-Hogeschool, Campus Groenplaats, Swaelen room

Contribution


Abdelfattah Mourou


First Vice-President of the Parliament, Tunisia

God be blessed.

Ladies and gentlemen,
the question we have to deal with this morning handles with the relationship between young people and elderly, that is the cooperation among generations as a value that can help in the building of future.

This subject, as it is clear, is about one of the dilemmas that the human beings have been facing for a long time.

That’s why human societies have  been influenced by what happens among their children; there is a difference among different levels of comprehension. Just because of these differences, social scientists ans psychologists divided human life’s duration in four phases: childhood, adolesence, adulthood and elderly.

Each of these phases is characterized by its physical and intellectual peculiarities, that lead to different behaviours.

The child, after knowing his body and wht is around him, come sto the phase of distinction and approximation; he doesn’t take any responsibility and hasn’t got any firm opinion.

As for the adolescent, he distinguishes himself for his completed development os his body structure, he looks at what is around him, particularly behaviours, and he tries do define his behavioural inclinations and a scale of values that is for his own. And he judges on the strength of some ideals other people’s behaviours; he pusher himself towards the building of a future based on dreams and visions.

As for the adult, he is oriented towards reality, and he wants to influence this reality and to pass from dreams to an aware condition.

He takes into account the key possibility, and therefore the guiding light of the tendency to the dream of changing blows away, his dreams to change things fleg.

Finally the old people put an end to the principle work and begin to evaluate what they achieved and to gather some principles and to think to good and bad sides of what they have done. These stances based on age are what we call conflict among generations, between sons and fathers, as fathers obstacle changings. They are in fact passive conservatives, who accuse their children to be superficial, trivial and impatient.

Maybe it is now useful t ogive a hint on what is happening today in the Arab world, to be able to point out how this crisis is dangerous.

Arab countries have gone out of colonization for about sixty years and National governments have grown up, led by liberators’ groups, who became aware of values of freedom, dignity, joy of life. They undertook to realize these promises on behalf of young people.

But the governing elites very soon held onto the power and kept out young people from taking part in the leadership.

Not to urge people sto open themselves to what is better makes nothing but postpone democratic participation.

What young people claim about freedom and social justice is nothing but a dream. This closing shows a clash that took to extraordinary agitations, and among their results we can see what is called Arab spring. People hung on the legitimacy of such an Arab spring to change the rules.

Those who have some profits, being aware of the dangerousness of this changing, decided to maintain social and political condition in the status quo. And this is the reason of the great anarchy and chaos we looked inside Arab reality.

The question we put today is that: how can future be protected and safeguarded?

I wish authorities will take into account people’s opinions.

I also wish they will listen to the institutions operating for dialogue, and they will take into account the outlooks of reliable institutions promoting dialogue, whose aim is the end of conflicts.

 

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