The Queen of Hearts
Yemen Should Come with a Deck of Cards, like Iraq.
Ramzia Al-Eryani, chairperson of the Yemen Women’s Association, believes that there is a political inability to find a viable alternative to Ali Abdullah Saleh, and she expects serious conflicts between the parties that may lead to armed confrontation if the President keeps to his decision not to run for another electoral term.Al-Eryani added that the decision would have serious repercussions for democracy and development plans, given the President’s recognized talents in handling such challenges. The women leaders appealed to the President to stand by his people. YO
Pretty negative huh? Very Scary. But the reference to democracy and development gives it away. Then I remembered this guy who said that the NGO’s in Yemen are also compromised:
And just as the Yemeni government sought to coopt the independent press, it now sponsors its own non-governmental organizations. Salih has worked to push independent groups out of business.
So I checked on her. She’s a relative of some high ranking GPC leader. And Saleh’s daughter is the honorary president of one of the woman’s organizations. Takes a little time to adjust to the concept of a NGO thats not automaticly oppositonal to the government or at least independent. But the result of Saleh’s 27 years of rule has been described as “a culture of corruption,” which makes those people who remain independent even more admirable.
Related 2003 Parliamentary elections: The GPC, whose election-time logo was the silhouette of a rearing horse, benefited from free publicity paid for with government resources…..The ruling party’s most compelling campaign message was quintessential pork-barrel politics: if you want better community services, a civil service job or government contracts, only the ruling party can deliver. ….(Yemen) could be on the road to becoming a one-party quasi-democracy, like Egypt, wherein opposition parties are allowed to compete but not to win.
