Beware: The new priority of reform [Archives:2004/788/Opinion]

By Prof. Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Tarb
For The Yemen Times
The desire for reform is one of the lawful dreams of all peoples all over the world. Nobody can tyrannize the dream.
Stability does not imply stillness. Policies should be tested over several years. However, if something goes wrong in the social structure, they should be replaced by new ones, which are to be carried out by new faces that have not contributed to failed plans.
Sustaining policies in face of their failure is some kind of stubbornness that may lead to unfortunate confrontations. Not changing faces in ministries and causing worry to people could incite riot. In such a case, security clampdowns may succeed in subduing people's wishes in the short-term, but will not do that forever.
There are the problems of oil, security looseness, judicial corruption and brokering the state's real estates and lands. People everywhere are asking for dismissing the officials responsible for that and trying them.
Shouts have arisen from different areas appealing to the President to rid the country of various problems. The president's calls in Ibb and other provinces were expected to activate the Central Organization for Counting and Auditing (COCA) to take the president's speech as a permission to open the big files. We do not mean that they should be made scapegoats but to do a step in the right direction applying the law to all people.
People wish that even one or two corrupt officials paid the price for their misconduct. It has become a general wish the absence of whose realization has made life more troublesome. It is ineffective to try to mend what is damaged by some officials. We are in need of a revolution and to be fuel for it.
Mr. President: nepotism has instilled itself in some of the state's men. And if you know, nepotism is the mother of disasters. A group of people surround a particular official and makes him unable to see. They build an iron barrier between him and the people's hopes.
One person among the retinue of an official may be more dangerous than the official himself when the latter succumbs to the suggestions, allusion, and whims of the former. This plague is one of the consequences of a long stay on the chair of power. But when an official is toppled, people get a view of facts and they wonder why they kept silent, and why they are keeping silent.
It is time for change. I do not think that there is anybody in this country who deny that even the human mind is abused here.
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