Law and order is all we want [Archives:2003/652/Viewpoint]

A fabulous and excellent remark done by President Ali Abdullah Saleh in his latest interview on al-Jazeera Satellite Channel was “Yemen of law and order”. This is the key statement that would have Yemen take off again and become a modern state just like many others.
It is quite straightforward and common sense to see that establishing a state of law and order is instrumental for the welfare and progress of any country.
Furthermore, we cannot deny that Yemen has gone far beyond the acceptable limits concerning the implementation of law and order. We have reached a stage, where the implementation of final court rulings is the exception while the un-implementation of those rulings are the norm.
If you sit alone and think of Yemen's real problems you would realize that they all come out as consequences from the failure of the government to apply the law on all citizens equally.
We can even take case studies and see what is going on. Firstly, the implementation of judicial rulings rarely takes place. And even if it does take place, it is implemented because the verdict was in favor of the powerful party, who pays bribes to have police forces and authorities move to do their duty. If the ruling were to be in favor of the weaker side, he may eventually die before implementing one letter of the final judicial ruling.
When we come to the judiciary system itself, we would also realize that corruption and mismanagement have caused tremendous damage to the so-called 'independent' judiciary system. There is an enormous number of unjust rulings that were applied either because they were bribe-driven or because of the inefficiency and incompetence of the judge(s) involved.
When we come to the other aspects of implementing the law, we would see that because of lack of supervision in governmental institutions, employees usually break the law and do not process applications without getting bribes and gifts. This is the case for the whole ministry from top to bottom. The only difference is that the -unmonitored- minister gets illegal commissions in the millions, while the lower-ranking employees get them in the thousands of Yemeni rials. So it ends up that government authorities do not operate properly resulting in a weaker heath, education, and civil service system that signals the weakness in enforcing law and order.
But there is always an excuse that the government comes up with when attempting to enforce the law, and that is “we have no resources” to do so. Well, if we have a look at the huge commissions, bribes, and cash presented to ministers and deputies and other officials, we would realize that this money is more than enough to cover the needed raises in salaries of government employees. Resources are there but are not appropriately channeled. This requires a lot of effort and monitoring by the head of state to his cronies and the ones below them to ensure that a proper system is in place. The media can then play the role of a watchdog to monitor things on the ground.
In brief, it is possible to have the law enforced on every citizen, no matter how powerful he is, but it needs our president's commitment to do so. He looked committed on the screen, and I believe he sincerely meant what he said.
He has said the words, now it is time for action
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