When a committee breeds another committee [Archives:2008/1148/Opinion]
Yahya Al-Haddi
During its most recent meeting, the National Defense Council (NDC) decided to form a presidential committee, chaired by Vice President Abdurabbo Mansour Hadi, to be in charge of suggesting workable solutions to pressing issues and taking the kind of measures and procedures that maintain nationwide security. The committee was made up with the good determination to resolve issues one by one in a way complying with the public interest.
Such nicely floating words concealed the real goal of forming the presidential committee, which is calming the escalating protests in different parts of South Yemen and cracking down on protests, contrarily to the NDC's decision that meant to examine and investigate unrest in the different parts of Yemen. Any identified reasons needn't creativity or harder efforts to discover them. Regretfully, solutions suggested by the authority seem to be far away from the real problems and have nothing to do with the status quo.
Dear readership, If want to verify how serious the government is to deal with a particular issue, you need only to make sure whether a special committee was formed to be in charge of handling such an issue. In case this committee appears on the website or on front pages of official newspapers, you have to directly bear in mind, without inquiring about further details, that 'the cycle bin' will be the final resting place for the issue in question.
Last year, a republican decree was issued to form a committee, of which the name as written in two lines: “The National Committee for Addressing the Negative Social Phenomenon and Protecting the National Unity”. According to the republican decree, the committee's tasks were topped by addressing the notable consequences, which the 1994 Civil War left behind. The committee was not formed as a result of care about the national interest, or in response to citizens' concerns. But thanks to pressure practiced by enraged retirees and those dismissed from government jobs in the southern governorates without a clear reason, the government was obliged to form this committee.
If the government was credible and honest since the very beginning, had good intents to carry out pre-planned activities and gave a real role to that committee, most of the notable consequences related with the 1994 Civil War and the currently experienced dire situation would be avoided.
On the contrary, the government behaved in an irresponsible manner, and ignored and underestimated citizens' sufferings and pains until all the reconciliation efforts reached an impasse, and consequently failed to deal with the growing negative phenomena nationwide.
We fear that the current dire situation may continue worsening, mainly as the government seems to be neither serious nor concerned about what is happening. This government never thinks about reviewing or modifying any of its vulnerable mechanisms suggested for addressing certain issues.
Nothing can help us get rid of the current dire situation except for forming a new supreme committee in order to oversee how the previously formed committees operate, and then reorganize and reprioritize their activities and duties.
Source: Al-Masdar.net
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[archive-e:1148-v:18-y:2008-d:2008-04-21-p:opinion]
