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Topic Discussion IV
Achieving Good Governance
Controlling Corruption, Improving
Administration
and Strengthening the Rule of Law
Room 5
(15 of 18 pages)
Madam Speaker: Thank you. Is there any other country that has not yet had
an opportunity to speak? Anyone in the back rows that would like to make a comment? If not then I will re-open
the floor to the Yemenis and others. We are doing well on time but there still are a number of people who would
to speak or say more. People I had to limit earlier so there are some time pressures so I would ask you please
to be concise. Amat, would you like to speak?
Amat Afeem Al Souswa: Thank you very much, Madam Chairperson. I will leave my specific time to my colleagues
from the opposition and the trade unions except for one thing and that is related to the democracy making. I think
we are still making it so all these problems and issues relating to the corruption, the misuse of the public finance
to the matter of the law enforcement and alike within our countries are really the same.
I would like to say one thing. I hope that whenever we are talking about good governance that we are not forgetting
about the full involvement of women, especially in a country like Yemen where people tend to think only of them
as participating and the appearance on the visible activities only and therefore forgetting about them. When it
comes to talking about matters, really important to the survival of any democratic system so this is one thing
and also Yemen has only been introduced to the written kind of phenomenon very recently so all of these things
have to be taken into consideration when we are talking about the new aspects. Thank you very much.
Madam Speaker: Other commentaries?
Speaker: I am a member of parliament from the Socialist Party in Yemen. As far as the good governance is
concerned, it is actually a matter relating to many other issues that have been already mentioned by the colleagues
here but I will try to mention the things which hinder, which undermine the government and which vitalize corruption.
I think it starts with school. Corruption in our country starts at school. Pupils, students and graduates experience
this phenomenon, even the diplomas, the questions are given beforehand and the graduates when they graduate and
they look for a job they know they cannot access the job unless they have a push. This is one aspect of corruption
for the generations. So everything relates to people.
Concerning governance for instance, we could say that this is exhausting the citizens and for instance if the citizen
has a problem and he addresses himself to the state and he will have to pay the price and the city, before reaching
the government, he needs a push. This is a big catastrophe in our country and we need a push in everything. We
need a push to get a job, in education, in order to go to university and in everything so this is what the citizens
suffer from because it weakens governance and this is replacing the law, and all the kidnappings, all the arrests,
all the armed activities, this is a result of this. For instance we have in prison, we have got laws concerning
the prisoners rights. However, there are still constraints in the prisons and some people are imprisoned for months
and years. Nobody asks about them. Nobody wonders anything about them so there is a degradation of values so there
is a culture of corruption and good decent individual is considered like an idiot. The one who is rich is very
respected. This of course weakens the governance. It weakens the sovereignty of the law and we say for instance
we have the local governments. When the parties came to power and adopted the local governments. However when they
seize power and came to office they abandoned this.
We were supposed to have elections. However, it has been postponed until after the presidential elections so the
implementation sometimes even if there are negatives in the constitution, if we get satisfied with what we have,
if we implement only 50% of the law, at least say 20% of the law, it is enough for us already but in our country
and in other third world developing countries, this is a culture. It is the culture of absence of law, of corruption.
Of the corrupt and the one who corrupts. Thank you.
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