Thank you very much for coming here today and providing your insight.
One of the questions I have is about elections, and you've talked about elections. Usually, elections in mature democracies are fought over ideas, but in Africa that is the furthest thing.... Elections there usually are fought over power and resources, but tribalism also has a huge impact, whereby one clan or one tribe will try to subsume the other minority tribes.
It seems to me that we talk about democracy and we try to have an impact there by making sure that elections are free and fair, but one thing that we have not tried to do—and I'm not saying Canada in general, I'm talking about the global community—in those countries that have fragile democracies or are fragile states is to change the way they do democracy, so that rather than having elections fought on tribalism or clans, their democracy would be fought on ideas, on a platform.
It seems to me that all of the violence, all of the inner strife in those countries, and the plundering of resources, even in those democratic states, starts from the issue of power that has been obtained not through ideas but because of someone being the more popular tribal leader or clan leader. Has there been any attempt to change the way they do democracy in those countries?