Good intentions [Archives:2004/713/Letters to the Editor]
M.A.N. Al Sayadi
[email protected]
I read your editorial on South Korea and would like to express my admiration of its contents. But this is exactly the point of just good intentions. Just good intentions without a proper analyses of your own countries local situation, mentality-culture-and all sorts of other excuses as our religion is one of the main factor we will never reach any top.
We are too jealous and envious of each other. We are still engaged in determining who is a Yemeni who is not.
I have been working for ten years for our beloved country making efforts to engage people in developing Yemen, so that at least we would have a goal, but to no avail. Blaming tribal issues, so-called corruption, or the government proved to be useless. There were always people who turned up at the last minute who knew better the means of how to improve Yemen.
We lack the mentality to do it in our country, yet we have brains that cam master development outside Yemen. Yemenis in exile are doing extremely well. Maybe we should try to find out why that is so, instead of seeing them as second class people because their father is Yemeni and mother is not.
In principle, with its rich national recourses, its intelligent and hardworking labor force, Yemen should be one of the most developed nations in the whole Arab world. Yemen has what most other Arab nations lack, i.e., real incentives, and without those, our development pace will continue to grow too slow.
I have had my education under the most difficult circumstances but managed because of a Yemeni father who gave me the incentives needed for success.
There are so many Yemeni fathers in Yemen who now should do the same. As you may have learned in Korea, it was the fathers who send out their sons to learn in the West, that is true for Japan too.
We have enormous recourses abroad including very well-educated Yemenis, some as myself associated to major industries who would love to come and be instrumental to reach for the top. I hope Yemeni fathers get the message.
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