The General Peoples Congress Authority, not state [Archives:2002/34/Focus]

BY ABDULFATTAH AL-HAKIMI
Through monitoring and analyzing the rapid changes effected in the legislative and legal structure of the political system in Yemen throughout the past seven years, there can be detected a group of deformities and aspects of failure that befell the political life. The most prominent of these is the process of occasional dissolving and cancelling of powers, such as the authority of the presidential council- parliament and insistence of the parliamentary majority party on going ahead in effecting legislative amendments, usually serving the ruling partys continuation in power. The ruling party other major aim is to confine in its hands all powers and their links as long as possible, quite contrary to the principle of peaceful transfer of power as declared in article 5 of the constitution. The constitutional and legal amendments that had been made represented consolidation of the principle of monopolizing power not for transferring it and also emptying the political system of its essence.
The process of controlling the power also aims at achieving monopoly by the ruling party of managing the electoral process and abolition other parties right to membership of the Supreme Committee for Elections under pretext of guaranteeing independence of the Supreme Committee. IN other words they want to convince the people that members of the Supreme Committee, mostly from the GP, have acquired independence merely by being chosen and that they actually could run an election process that could influence the authority and its ruling partys decision in scoring a sweeping majority, and that is could be done through providing convenient circumstances for reducing acts of doctoring and government interference to the possible minimum degree.
Indicators point at recession in parties and various segments of the society in the political participation in elections and at a diversion in seem-democratic course measured during the past ten years. Percentage of participation in parliamentary elections has dropped from 84,7 % in 1993 to 60,9 % in 1997, though the number of those registered in election lists have increased by 75% in 1997.
Undoubtedly, the increase in number of registered voters reflects growth in awareness but against that the decline in participation in the elctoral process reflects a sense of frustration with the voters and the elections lacking of credibility and the minimum degree of fairness. A report prepared by Human Development at the ministry of planning for the year 200-2001 has recognised that fact and attributed it to what was described as a sense of no avail of voting. New amendments have been effected on the law of local authority aimed at reconsidering division of constituencies in order to disperse presence of opposition parties and redistributing them among governorates constituencies. The process also aimed at preventing any possible alliances between opposition parties and consequently confirm the ruling partys control over all electoral districts. Ousting effective opposition parties representatives from elections committee could be deemed a normal and organised extension of mentality of appropriation of power and rejection of others under a fake legislative umbrella. Thus the principle of consultation in rule could be frozen and changing the ruling party into a power donating authority just as it was used to do before May 22, 1990. The ruling party could not up to now become an ideological party, except of its being organised on the basis of an ideology depending on a principle of power for the sake of power. The GPC party still offers itself, even to its members, by betting on its capability in influencing others convictions and ideologies through dependence on the government potentials, resources and tools.
It can be concluded that hegemony over power with comfortable or sweeping majority, is the traditional and strategic project of the ruling GPC ruling party because its position in parliament is the inlet to control of power in all other fields. To achieve this end for instance, the party resorts to block the way before other political parties and organisations and strangle general and electoral freedoms. All these stands make the principle of peaceful transfer of power, the essence an spirit of democracy, merely theoretical, but nonexistent in the actual political life.

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