What revolutions are all about! [Archives:2003/676/Viewpoint]

Editor
Every year, we as Yemenis celebrate our glorious revolution anniversary in a stylish and spectacular manner. When you walk around the main cities at night during the days of celebration, you would notice lights of all colors and sizes. You can see flags raised almost on every building you see. All of those remind us that many years ago, our fathers and grandfathers fought for our freedom and future. Those days recall the days of struggle that ended with a historic day on which a new beginning was signaled for all Yemenis.
However, one also needs to ask himself. Have we truly gone in the path set up by the revolutionaries? After all, the revolution was supposed to be a beginning of a new era of development and more prosperity for all Yemenis. The objectives of any revolution are always to achieve what is best of the people. Have our people gained what the revolutionists wanted them to? Unfortunately not!
Today, we are still very much behind when it comes to the expectations of those who sparked the revolution. We may be organizing festivities, parades, and signing national anthems and songs about the revolution. But what would all of this do for us if we have not formulated the basic ideas and core principles of our revolution, which were to eradicate poverty and illiteracy, to bring freedom to the people, to enhance standard of living, and to bring the country to the level of developed countries?
The revolution is not a mere word that we remember at anniversaries and celebrations, it is a practice in our daily life that we should carry out through hard work and dedication.
In my opinion, we should seize the opportunity of every revolution anniversary to remember its goals and whether we achieved them or not. We need to understand that the revolution was the beginning of a long road towards noble and honorable goals. What we should do on every anniversary is to see where on the path are we, how much have we passed, and how much is there to walk to reach the revolution's goals.
Celebrations and lights on the streets of the cities of the country are not enough. We need to be more practical in our celebrations. We need to bring to the attention of our decision makers and leaders that we still have a long way to go and we need to focus more on the steps that would take us to the end of the road rather than on artificial useless actions that could only be a waste of time, effort, and money.
How would the revolutionists who achieved the revolution feel when they see us spending millions of Yemeni rials on parades and electricity bills used for lighting thousands of lights for the anniversary of the revolution, while thousands are hungry and illiterate behind closed doors?
My viewpoint should not be an intimidation or a reason to accuse me of not being a patriotic. But my intention is to get to the core rather than focus on the shell. Celebrations would have been much more meaningful if we had achieved most of the goals we aimed for.
At least this is what I think will be preferred by the ones who led the revolution and sacrificed their souls for the Yemeni nation if they had been alive today.
Not to get me wrong, I reassure all decision makers that I am not against celebrating on this occasion. Nevertheless, I believe that efforts should be renewed on this important occasion to work on achieving the goals, the real goals of our blessed revolutions.
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