Lugar remarks at 25th anniversary celebration of the Center for International Private Enterprise

I congratulate the Center for International Private Enterprise as you celebrate 25 years of service to our nation and the cause of democracy. I am especially pleased to be part of an occasion honoring the work of Hernando de Soto, who has done so much to promote the principles of property rights, entrepreneurship, and market economics. His innovative work has changed fundamental terms of reference regarding how best to reduce poverty and build healthy societies.

I still recall my meetings with President Reagan, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Dante Fascell, and AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland to discuss how a National Endowment for Democracy could employ the fundamentals of democracy building to oppose the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union. Back in the 1980s, a consensus was reached to create the NED, and its four institutes administered by the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the Chamber of Commerce, and the AFL-CIO.

During the past 25 years, we have experienced moments when the necessity of the NED and the core institutes has been questioned in Congress. Several times I had to go to the Senate floor with other like-minded Senators to stop efforts to withhold or even to eliminate funding for the NED. But I believe the value of democracy promotion has been proven time and again, and the work of the NED and the core institutes is one of the great foreign policy bargains of the last quarter century.

The resourceful efforts of CIPE have been an essential component of this success. The foundations of business and rule of law are critical to the long term sustainability of any democracy. As a former small business owner and operator, and a lifetime member of the Indianapolis Rotary Club, I know how essential it is for business to engage in civic life. This is as true on the international stage as it is in local communities.

I have followed CIPE's efforts in Eastern Europe with particular interest. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, CIPE partnered with key organizations and institutions in these newly-free countries, helping them to develop the policy framework for strengthening market economies and democratic governance.

During the mid-1990's CIPE's Economic Roundtable Program in Hungary helped policy makers identify reform priorities in the absence of any structured political debate over such issues or publicly available drafts of legislation. CIPE later worked with key economic reformers within the Democratic Opposition of Serbia to craft an economic reform platform that was used in the successful election campaign that brought down Slobodan Milosevic. In Ukraine, CIPE partners successfully pushed for the passage of a freedom of information law that, for the first time, allows for public review and comment of draft laws and regulations. Likewise, in Russia, CIPE has been active for years in working with chambers of commerce and other business associations on behalf of the rule of law, anti-corruption initiatives, transparency of governmental actions, and the removal of administrative barriers to economic opportunity.

Despite such projects, and many others around the world, democracy promotion has never been an easy endeavor. Recently we have witnessed a counteroffensive by some authoritarian regimes against pro-democracy groups. A report that I commissioned from the National Endowment for Democracy several years ago notes: "Representatives of democracy assistance NGOs have been harassed, offices closed, and staff expelled. Even more vulnerable are local grantees and project partners who have been threatened, assaulted, prosecuted, imprisoned, and even killed." The report, entitled "The Backlash against Democracy Assistance," found that a number of governments are tightening the legal constraints against democracy assistance.

These obstacles complicate the work of democracy promotion, but they also underscore how important it is to continue with creative, non-partisan initiatives that support democratic governance, transparency, the rule of law, and free enterprise. It is also important to underscore that democracy is not a singularly American cause. The European Union; the U.N. Democracy Fund; and NED-like initiatives sponsored by Germany, Taiwan, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and others are part of the democracy-promotion community.

I believe the coming years will offer great opportunities for enduring and even transformative achievements in democracy promotion of the type that we witnessed in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. I have every confidence that CIPE will be resourceful in embracing this challenge. I appreciate very much your creative contributions to democracy, and I look forward to celebrating with you the successes to come.

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