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CALD
will be assisting the La Margherita in their Asian mission,
particularly in arranging meetings with CALD member parties
and other organizations—the Democrat Party of Thailand and
the National Council of the Union of Burma in Bangkok; and,
the Liberal Party, the CALD Secretariat and the Friedrich
Naumann Foundation in Manila.
CALD
Executive Director John Coronel, Liberal Party Director
General Concepcion Asis and Democrat Party's Sirinun
Senakant |
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Vernetti
including audiences with Senate President Franklin
Drilon, the 3rd highest Philippine official
and president of the Liberal Party, Mr. Abhisit Vejjajiva,
MP, leader of the Democrat Party of Thailand, and Philippine
Deputy Speaker Benigno Aquino III. Mr. Coronel will also
host a luncheon reception in Manila in honor of the visiting
delegation.
The
European Democratic Party (EDP) was established in July 2004
and celebrated its first congress in December 2004 in
Brussels, when Francois Bayrou of the French UDF and
Francesco Rutelli of the Italian la Margherita have been
elected as co-presidents.
The EDP
is officially recognized by the EU as a "European Political
Party" and its members include democratic and reformist
parties from several countries such as
France,
Italy, Spain, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Cyprus,
Belgium, Estonia.
In the
European Parliament the EDP, together with the Liberals,
formed in 2004 the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for
Europe (ALDE), the third biggest group at the European
Parliament. Its parties share a reformist and pro-European
political platform, and wish to go beyond the traditional
liberal and social-democratic ideas and policies, promoting
a third way approach that is similar to the Clinton and
Blair traditions.
In fact,
one of the first steps of the European Democratic Party,
together with European consolidation and enlargement, has
been to establish a link with the US Democrats. After a
first political meeting in
Rome
in February 2005, the party established the Alliance of
American and European Democrats, with offices in
Brussels
and Washington.
The EDP
and La Margherita would like to focus their interest on
Asia, building on contacts and links with democratic,
progressive and reformist political parties such as those
represented in the CALD.
One of
their goals is to organize in Rome between October and
November 2005 an International meeting on "Europe/Asia
Relations- Dialogue between Asian and European Democrats"
involving different Asian and European democratic political
parties. |
