In Yemen, "the Rich Get Richer …". How Long Can this Mayhem Continue?

The insistence of the governing regime in Sana'a to continue to deal with the various forms of opposition it is encountering, through the bloodthirsty military security apparatus of the regime being the only answer the government finds in dealing with the discontent being felt in the northern and southern governorates, defies explanation. After so many years in power, and so many trials and tribulations, President Ali Abdeulla Saleh and his most senior partners in the regime, who supposedly have gone out of their way to ensure the longevity of the presidency of Ali Abdulla Saleh, should start asking themselves to what do they owe this "lack of appreciation" by their ungrateful subjects? After all, aren't these officials working night and day looking after the interests of the Yemeni people? In the meanwhile, the icons of the regime have no qualms about how they take their share of the looting of public and even private property, which has mushroomed their wealth beyond any anyone's ability to measure such wealth, even if by the closest of staff to these icons of the regime. One is bound to be astounded by the ability of these unorthodox civil servants to manage so much personal wealth, while hardly finding enough time to tend to their public duties with the minimum reflection of any sense of responsibility they have for the welfare of this poor country of Yemen. As for the protection of the interests of the good citizens of this unfortunate land, that would not be within the context of the public service which they understand, as these icons have become the most likely perpetrators for which protection is needed. No one can deny that the visible assets these horrendously evil civil servants have collected are beyond anything that any of the most knowledgeable about public corruption would care to admit to knowing about, but if one also considers the laundered or invisible assets these people have squandered, the devil himself would claim Yemen's corruption to be the best that he has accomplished in this Earth, since God threw Adam out of paradise. This was attested to by several of Yemen's great late literary personalities, who were brave enough to echo their concerns about the plight of Yemen under what one of them called "the most corrupt regime in history" (Abdullah Baraddoni), not to mention the pleadings of many of them who urged the President in many public occasions to "feed them from hunger and secure them from fear" (Mohammed Ali Al-Rabadi ), as Allah has bestowed upon Himself to do for mankind.
There have been many efforts to try to get the regime in Yemen to see the light that the current situation is slowly getting the country to the abyss of despair, poor economic performance and unequal access to natural and public resources, not to mentions the rise of an ugly monopolistic commercial establishment that has been allowed to develop, which has closed the doors to any potential Yemeni citizen, who wishes to show some flair for commercial or financial enterprise (except of course for the elements of the regime, who have decided to make inroads into the world of "capital investment". It is safe to assume that such inroads to private enterprise come about through horrendous laundering schemes of stolen public assets, or embezzlement, or sheer open business enterprises that have sought to deliver honest seekers of meager livelihoods out of the way. Such vehicles include "investments" in mass transit for example, which has driven several independent taxi drivers and truck drivers out of the ability to provide livelihoods for their families . Having said that about these and other obviously suspicious enterprises, this observer has come to learn that the companies that "share" out the taxis to drivers who wish to operate the "company taxis" must pay the almost impossible sum of YR 5,000 per day to the company and the drivers must bear all the expenses etc., which would mean that the poor drivers would have to work from dawn to midnight to be able to eke out the funding needed to meet the formidable cost of living for their families. Some drivers have admitted to this observer that there are some days they are unable to achieve the needed revenue to meet these due daily payments, unless they include Friday, the Sabbath Day of the Moslems).
That is just one area in which senior officials from within the regime's closed family and tribal establishment have found niches for directing their "hard earned" capital towards the further exploitation of the people of Yemen in all their various walks of life. Then of course there are the glossy well organized "investment companies", such as petroleum service companies. These laundering enterprises work night and day to make sure that their monopolistic owners get their share of the meager oil wealth of Yemen. Accordingly most citizens have given up hope a long time ago that the petroleum resources and other natural resources of the land would provide a useful capital base that would launch Yemen towards promising equitable economic and social development, which most economic experts suggest is possible if Yemen enjoyed proper and ethical management of these resources, which are now depleting faster than the public servant hordes can scavenge them.

Yemen Times
Issue 1276
13 July 2009