ReflectionsA fist-full of objections [Archives:2005/832/Opinion]
By Yahya Al-Olfi
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Since after the revolution to now, Yemen's responsible men keep repeating that Yemen is poor. I think it's a line that is just lame excuse. Yemen is far richer than many countries that have achieved success because of their hard work, and because they have the will to succeed.
One of Yemen's past prime ministers once declared: “We cannot remain like the idle entourage of the Sultan, chew Qat, whisper nonsense, dream on, rely on others, act idly and extend our hands to solicit from them to build us schools and hospitals, provide us rations, build factories, do land reclamation, and give us scholarships as if we were the era's delight of the eye.”
In my humble opinion, stopping the ongoing theft of public money and retrieving the bank accounts smuggled abroad as well as having good management, justice and judging people on what they can do, not where they hail from, shall put Yemen on the right track.
International hypocrisy
Although one cannot belittle what happened to European Jews during World War II, I was literally shocked to hear that Kofi Annan participated in the new Yad Vashim manipulation and refused to visit the apartheid wall dividing Jews from Palestinians.
How dare we shed tears at Yad Vashim, on what happened in the past, while at the same time forgetting, ignoring and overlooking the crimes perpetrated next door against innocent Palestinians who are since more than half a century now paying the price for the European crimes against humanity.
All who attended, including Joschke Fischer are a bunch of international hypocrites and lack the courage to set the record straight. And after that, we naively dare to question Zionist hegemony? Or else I dare say any country to establish a memorial for the Palestinian victims of the ongoing Israeli barbarism.
British Embassy
Yemenis have long ago nurtured this good impression about the British in that they are well organized and practical. Unfortunately, this is not what is taking place nowadays at the embassy in Sana'a, namely the essential consular services.
Yemenis and foreigners living in Yemen have to deliver their requests through a courier service, which the embassy resorted to fearing terrorist threats and this is very understandable.
The problem here is that they are not doing like the American Embassy, which has managed this process brilliantly. At the British Embassy the Courier Service employees have virtually replaced the embassy's consular officers, and that is not the case with the Americans. A small advice for the British: please imitate the Americans and stop acting a la Yemenite as is the case now.
Al-Kafeel (the guarantor)
The KSA and other Gulf countries prevent foreigners from entering their respective states except through a national guarantor who confiscates the passport of the foreigner as soon as he arrives.
Many Saudi citizens are abusing the rule by pretending to be guaranteeing many foreigners under the guise of employment in their own businesses, while in fact they let them work anywhere provided that they receive their remunerations first hand, e.g. if the foreign laborer earns SR6,000, the guarantor would take SR5,000 and then gives the rest to the foreigner. This is a form of new slavery which ought to be condemned and forthrightly stopped.
Sana'a University
The Achilles' heel of Sana'a University is the graduation certificate. Graduates do suffer a lot in order to get their respective certificates. The university would do well if it copies out the method followed by the Yemeni Education Ministry with regard to leaving Secondary School, and cardboard certificates, instead of the current primitive and impractical method. Can Basura do it?
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