The invisible motives behind the current crisis [Archives:2007/1099/Opinion]
By: Ali Al-Sarari
These days, the Yemeni government cares for shaping a dim image about the current crisis. Through this, it aims to inflame the feelings of politicians and grassroots by forcing them to implement the authority's urgent agenda, represented by articulating Mr. President's initiative.
The Joint Meeting Parties leadership hasn't yet made any declaration to convey these parties' rejection of the initiative's content. JMP only rejected the efforts exercised by the government and the ruling party to have the initiative in place of the outstanding dialogue between them and the government, which has continued up until the government and its party announced its suspension over the past few days.
From the JMP's viewpoint, the initiative released by Mr. President was seriously required to be included in the dialogue and its ideas should have been understood as part of the dialogue's agenda. But the authority and its party, as it seems, have no will to do so. What they only want is retain the current crisis as a tested mechanism for accomplishing their agendas, the motives of which still remain secret and unclear.
In total contrast to the surface image showing the current crisis between the government and opposition parties, the real image proves that such a crisis is the authority's product, and its announced subjects, which look urgent, on the one hand, and unnecessary, on the other, have been agreed upon inside closed circles. JMP is only wanted to play the role of the stupid guy at the wedding party, or to function as a cover for the authority's wrong policies.
Talk about the authority's crisis is not randomly made. Rather it discloses the appropriate analysis, which is based on authentic information and the tight relation between the causes and the effects.
One can observe the real motives – which are often invisible – behind the current crisis by having a serous glance at the following facts and phenomena. The crisis came from outside the ailing dialogue that took place between political parties represented in the parliament, including the General People Congress, and three of the JMP members under the chairmanship of Dr. Abdulwahab Mahmoud. This dialogue was based on two very important political agreements, one of which was reached ahead of last year's presidential and local council elections, in order to ensure free and fair elections. The second agreement was suggested by the European Union Election Observation Mission in light of its report on the elections. The GPC was the first party to sign the agreement followed by other political parties and organizations, and then the EUEOM Chief Observer Baroness Emma Nicolson of Winterbourne.
The agreement contained many future tasks and duties that can not be accomplished unless there is a serous dialogue while the dialoguing parties should present all the ideas included in the document of dialogue limitations, which was signed and proclaimed last June. President Ali Abdullah Saleh sponsored the dialogue, particularly after the dialoguing parties agreed to have him their reference in event of a dispute.
During the dialogue, neither President of the Republic nor GPC presented any suggestions for changing the current presidential system, as stated in Point No. 1 of Saleh's initiative, which is made up of Ten Points. The other remaining points were covered by the dialogue's agenda, as well as the platforms of GPC and JMP presidential candidates. Most of these points were mentioned as common denominators while differences at the early stages of the dialogue did not predict any failure. In addition, the dialoguing parties succeeded in reaching a consensus on the various suggestions and proposals to remove the consequences of 1994 Civil War and other fierce conflicts that took place in the past.
Ali Al-Sarari is a Yemeni Journalist and a well-known politician. He is the head of the information department at the Yemeni Socialist Party.
Source: Al-Ahali Weekly.
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