People pay the price for GPC-JMP conflict [Archives:2009/1224/Opinion]
Nadeem Al-Aswadi
The one who contemplates on negative events hindering Yemen's democratic course since the 1994 Civil War, is bound to realize a fundamental fact that made the authority admits that the ruling party cheats democracy and violates foundations and terms the democratic system is based on.
The ruling party controlled the entire government and dominated public funds, official media, military and security forces and the judiciary system while its government turned to practice oppression against citizens, thus changing the system of governance in Yemen into totalitarian, tribal and individual regime under the guise of democracy.
The regime reproduces itself again and again during each electoral process through fraudulent ballot boxes due to its absolute control of the Supreme Commission for Elections and Referendum (SCER). The regime spends public funds and government jobs in favor of the ruling party during any general election. Such a phenomenon was more salient through the ruling General People's Congress (GPC) transactions with Joint Meeting Parties (JMP). The former once threatens the latter's fans but intimidates them at another time.
The ruling party wants to fragment JMP member parties like it did when splitting parties of the National Opposition Council (NOC) and made them loyal with it. Both GPC and NOC parties turned to be faces of the same coin, most notably as the latter demonstrates faked opposition to deceive people.
Amid prevalence of some fake concepts of democracy, the ruling party thinks that it managed to deceive the outside world including the European Union and other international organizations concerned with democracy. It attempts to deceive them by pretending to be infallible, which is impossible to be one of its qualities forever.
It is good for the authority and its ruling party to understand what a democratic action means in other states that selected the democratic system of governance including Yemen. The authority didn't utilize experiences of other democratic states, nor does it care about how those states practice the democratic action. It is not shameful for somebody to benefit from others' experiences in enforcing equal citizenship in terms of rights and duties.
“Illusive democracy”
Democracy must be pondered upon as an indispensable manual for government, popular and media careers while all the state's authorities must abide by the democratic system. This point helps diagnose the real relationship between social and political freedoms and the media career, which functions as the basic criterion for assessing whether a particular authority is democratic or dictatorial.
A democracy mixed with dictatorship is called “illusive democracy” like what we are currently experiencing in Yemen where the government cracks down on opposition activists and journalists and practice against them different forms of harassment and violence. It drags defendants into moody courts to stand politicized trials that contradict the Constitution and laws put into practice.
Ruling party leaders are supposed to benefit from others' lessons and experiences, particularly after Yemeni society underwent different forms of conflicts and tasted their bitterness. Those parties conflicting over power and rule are impossible to offer something useful for their homeland. They turned out to be a destructive tool, hindering social prosperity and development. The may cause split of the nation into smaller states.
Those parties conflicting over power and rule will understand that they have been really involved in an unprecedented sedition and a conspiracy project that may lead Yemen to collapse. Such problems are created by unpatriotic parties that don't want Yemen to enjoy bless and stability. Both ruling and opposition parties proved to be only conflicting over power while the ordinary citizens turned to be pay the price for their conflict.
Source: Al-Balagh weekly
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