Liberal Party!! [Archives:2001/20/Focus]

Jalal Al-Sharaabi
Yemen Times
A group of the People’s General Congress Party (PGC) has recently, more specifically at the beginning of this week, announced the establishment of a Liberal Party. The task of the new party is to restructure the PGC in a more proper way and rearrange its cards in a way compatible with the predicted political confrontation in preparation for the coming election of 2003.
In my opinion, this move does not exceed a temporal whim to be encountered with many difficulties and obstacles. Probably the fist of these is the traditional formation that governs the decision-making positions within leadership of the PGC. Added to the above point is the tribal composition of this party that, during the 1980’s, posed as an umbrella for their parties and during the 1990’s, the leader of fractions, supporter of doctoring elections as well as collaboration with its former ally Islah Party at the expense of democracy and the voters’ will.
The other factor calling for skepticism in capability of a liberal approach in the PGC of effecting a change in this bad reality is the recent composition of the Shoura Council.
The Council has included some classical, outdated elements that have been removed from leading ministries and institutions as they proved their inefficiency, and thus to return through windows.
The previous periods have represented an open fraud on the people and many years were wasted. Those years should have been used for building the economy and the state. They were squandered in fragile alliances and ambiguous inapplicable strategies. The homeland’s future would be bleak, had the situation remained as it is and with the same mentality. They are merely political fightings swaying from right to left and vice versa. These battles would mostly lead to calamities victimizing the citizen and the country groaning under threadbare strategies. What is urgent needed is the uprooting of corruption, checking the lobby that is deforming Yemen’s civilization project, opening more room for a multi-party system, freedom of expression and providing a honorable living for the people.

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