Political indication of boycotting upcoming elections [Archives:2008/1204/Opinion]
Dr. Adel Al-Shuja'a
It is important to contemplate on the political indication of why Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) decided to boycott the upcoming parliamentary elections and what the consequence would look like. The option to boycott is the result of a deteriorating social status and political value of those parties, coupled with their weakening influence on the political ground and inability to satisfy the public opinion.
The indication of boycotting the elections also implies that JMP lacks the political culture and democratic values that help activate political action and reinforce citizenship principles, national responsibility and civic behavior.
As a result, we began to approach a new irresponsible e culture, which is notably dedicated in the political arena, as well as in society. This is what can be described as “culture of apostasy” due to its different values that persuaded people to shift their attention from nationalism to other talks about particular regions, villages and dynasties.
This may reflect a risk bell warning of a political vacuum that first appeared in the southern governorates. There are many individuals who attempt to make society free of politics, and this reality makes us before an independent society that is dismissed from political participation.
Some people don't realize this practice that has negative impacts on the future of our social system whose signs appeared clearly in society. Therefore, we turned to perceive various forms of violence, extremism and rebellion, unjustified protests, deviation and intellectual and ideological misguidance.
Boycotting the elections helps consolidate the role of extremist groups, grant terrorism additional strength, and hinder political reforms and any real progress toward better democratic development. Those opposition parties produced a gap in social awareness and such a gap gets expanded between speeches and actions. They proved their complete failure and being unable to become true political organizations for democratic upbringing and education, based on national values and principles.
Infringement in Yemen's politics
In light of the above statements, one may say that there is a great infringement in Yemen's political life because the opposition parties are concentrating their activities on limited political betting. And, because those parties don't undertake continuously effective political activities, most of their offices turned to house election brokers selling privileges and positions.
Frankly speaking, all the demands listed by the opposition parties have nothing to do with the democratic process, and the way they behave made them form suspicious and unjustified coalitions. All the practices pursued by these parties produced restless political situations, thereby persuading people to lose their confidence in politics and visualize them as suspicious gambles.
In this context, we should remember irresponsible practices by some private and party-affiliated newspapers that attempted to shape a negative image of the state by alleging that the government boosts corruption and nepotism. Consequently, educated people stopped playing an effective role in the political field and became extremely busy searching for personal interests.
Seemingly, all the parties in the nation are required to make quantitative and qualitative accumulations, as well as benefit from shocks and interactions.
Both the government and opposition are required to read sensitivity of the current political situation in order to expend harder efforts that may help them overcome pressing problems in this regard. Our nation's future is bound to deteriorate unless we really understand what our national role is, and this necessitates that we must discuss poverty indicators and suggest workable solutions to major problems in the education and public health sectors.
It is impossible for our homeland to avoid potential failure in the various political, social and security areas unless all the political parties work harder to resolve their own problems, put a stop to secession calls and establish new moves, based on effective political programs and civilized dialogues.
Source: Al-Thawra State-run Daily
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