Yemeni elections debate overcome FES’s evaluation meeting [Archives:2005/907/Local News]
SANA'A, Dec. 27 – The German foundation Fredrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) organized a meeting to evaluate its work in the previous years in Yemen since establishment of its office in 1999. However the meeting went into a different direction as the political parties and non-governmental organizations participating in the meeting requested that FES participates in monitoring the coming elections. The meeting, which took place last Tuesday in the Taj Sheba Hotel, was attended by a huge gathering of media, political figures and activists. FES has been operating in Yemen for more than 6 years in affiliation to the regional office in Amman, just recently this year the local office has officially become an independent country office.
The German foundation explained to the attendees that it welcomes new proposals for the year to come and that their main fields of work are political democratic culture, social justice, international co-operation, scientific research, educational support, and social development and media training.
Mr. Felix Eikenberg FES Sana'a resident representative stated that FES supports local organizations and authorities interested in various activities. He said that the foundation was named after the first democratically elected president after the end of the German empire and hence it encourages democracy and freedom of press. However, in response to the demands to monitor the Yemeni elections he said that they couldn't because they are not an independent establishment, as they are affiliated to the Social Democratic Party in Germany.
In his interposition, Hafiz Al-Bukari, a prominent Yemeni journalist said “We hope tat Fredrich Establishment will provide German experts to train the Yemeni journalist. They are in need of help to be trained to build their establishments on strong basis, in order to find secured funding recourses for their papers.” Albukari pointed out to the importance of concentrating on administrative journalists training, to raise them from their eminent state of anarchy.
He called the establishment to send Yemeni journalists to Germany to acquire skills, like that of the USA experience of (International visitor). Bukari also said that the Fredrich's Establishment had previously invited the deputy head German syndicate to visit Yemen. This project was done in cooperation with the Yemeni journalists Syndicate and resulted the training a number of economy journalists for a week.
However majority of the session turned into a political debate about the coming Yemeni elections and political situation in general. Mr. Mohamed Altieb, member of the ruling party in the Shoura Council, Mohamed Qahtan, head of political department in Islah political party, Mr. Abdulghani Abdulgadir from the Socialist party, Dr. Mohamed Almaqalih, head of the 'Yemeni Human Rights Observation' and a number of representatives of civil societies, all spoke of the necessity of participation of Fredrich Establishments in monitoring the elections, even if in an indirect way, by depending on the Yemeni non governmental organizations. They praised the Establishment's role in supporting the civil societies since the establishment of the office.
Fredrich Ebert Stiftung is an international non-profit German non-governmental organsiation committed to the principles of social democracy. It was founded in 1925 to be the oldest political German foundation. FES has offices in more than 80 countries. It implements a cultural democratic political program throughout the world, and is also interested in promoting awareness, and believes in the importance of political participation. FES has ten offices in the Middle East, in each of Yemen, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon Tunisia and Israel.
The foundation receives annual 6 million euros from the German federal Ministry for Economical Cooperation. This funding is dedicated to the foundation's activity in the area. FES also derives other funds through cooperation projects with the European Union and the German Foreign Ministry.
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