Annas [Archives:2004/763/Press Review]

9 August 2004
Main headlines
– The thereat of dissolving the “Al-Haq” and “People's Forces” parties, what does that mean?
– Rumours about the mobile phone
– Campaign of changes and arrests of mosque preachers, the Endowments denies it to be a governmental pursuit
– “Houthism”, a charge entering PM's dictionary in criticizing his government's officials
– Journalists Syndicate discusses recent threats against journalists
– Woman criticisms of political parties' stances, woman activists demand for “quota”
– Yemeni students boycott Barcelona activities because of Israeli participation
– Fire shots exchange between security troops and saboteurs at qat market in Ibb
– Justice Minister issues a circulation on refugees agreement and their relationship to human rights

On political parties organs, columnist Tawakul Abdulsalam Karman says in the societies that have known and experienced genuine democratic practices and experienced the freedom of press, politics and competition and multi-party systems, they say ” Give me a journal, I give you a party.” As for our (Yemeni) society we do not have enough examples to say so. Except for one or two newspapers that managed to have a listened to voice, more audible than the voice of big parties that do not have an organized mass presence except those papers. Other than that and despite of the big number of press publications, they remained as they had begun distributing hundreds of copies that are ineffective with regard to politics and decision making. The big parties, in government or opposition, did not give us that amount of courage or confidence to say so as despite of great capabilities we have not seen newspaper of so effective role. The reason is that those newspapers remained exclusive to adoption of the viewpoints of the influential in the party they represent.
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