Isn’t It Time to Take Stock? [Archives:2001/08/Focus]

Mohamed Al-Hakimi 
Yemen Times 
Taiz 
In our society, political and social life is determined by a serious disease, which has played a powerful role in cracking the common laity and sending away aspiration of a much better life. 
This bane is fanaticism. To add insult to injury, most of the Yemeni people have not yet clearly distinguished between darkness and light. Some people can simply sell their votes and dignity in case they get some rials in return. And what gets one’s goat is that most of them aspire of change and they themselves sign corruption and are standstill. 
In fact the tribal, sectarian and party fanaticism In the Yemen have already resulted in a lot of massacres and scandals. It killed many great Yemenis during and after Imamate. Killing sheiks during the era of president Al-Hamdi in the seventies was also a consequence of partisanship. Fighting among several Yemeni tribes is still taking place as we speak. January 1986 incidents in Aden killed several dedicated and noble figures. During the transformational period after the 1990 unification civil war erupted in 1994 between the two main parties of Yemen. The killing of a lot of people during the presidential, parliamentarian and local elections were all a mere fall-out. 
It is tribal, denominational and factional fanaticism which dominates over issues related to our political and social life. It has been clear that this fanaticism has not only influenced the common man, but was also adopted by many great writers; intellectuals; politicians, parties and even king-pins. And its negative role in ignoring the future prospects and common goals were deeply felt within the Yemeni society. This is almost true with our government, which keeps teaching people how to profession lying and corruption. Once there are elections, the authorities promise change into the better and promises to make miracles as soon as the elections are over. However; every and each election, the people get deceived over and over again. In fact, this has made people in charge calm down and never think or trouble themselves with planning to meet what they had promised since it is easy to buy votes with five hundred rials or a bundle or two of qat a day or even an hour before elections. This has been a quite well-known and successful policy in our present-day democracy. We should not lose sight of the fact that fanaticism has encouraged people to seek interests of their parties, neglecting totally the interests and destiny of their motherland or even their own families. 
To confound the readers, let me mention that the president Ali Abdullah Salah stressed in his speech delivered in Taiz University a month ago that corruption has covered almost every sector, official and private. To make it clear, he gave an example of what is wrong and what is mishandled expressing his uneasiness towards such sorry states of affairs. He said that social security, which should only be granted to the poor, was being given to officials and corrupt individuals. He also highlighted the rate of the unemployment, which really threatens the government and Yemen in general. In fact, the president looked fatigued and uneasy with the fact that some officials in key positions with tremendous responsibility are corrupt and untrustworthy. 
Even though this proves the president’s ability in understanding the conditions of the affairs of his country people, yet he also should realize that there is much to be done. 
Tomorrow, our country’s first local council elections will be held. People should not repeat the same old mistake once again. They should all realize that it is they are the ones who will either fight or support corruption depending on their votes and whom they will be electing. 
Let’s hope that Yemeni electors will seize this opportunity to start a real change and say, “We have abhorred corruption, inequity and fanaticism.” 

——
[archive-e:08-v:2001-y:2001-d:2001-02-19-p:./2001/iss08/focus.htm]