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Topic Discussion II
Building Public Trust
Elections & Legislatures
Room 3
(16 of 23 pages)
Chair: Thank you very much.
Speaker: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to introduce myself first. I am a member of the Yemeni Parliament
since the year 1997. I am from that constituency. I want to make some additions on some of the points raised here
today, on the issue of loss of confidence and particularly in emerging democracies such as my country.
There are numerous reasons for this but I will be focussing on three of them mainly. Perhaps out of my experience
of the last two years, I would like to say that among the reasons for the loss of confidence is the fact that in
countries like ours, emerging democracies, the role of the government or executive power is to be the center of
decision making and financial clout. Thus, the executive governs all different elements, more than the role of
the Parliament. In many cases, the role of Parliament is a mere formalistic role. There are no clear tasks for
parliamentarians, thus what is the role of the parliamentary? Is it an executive role such as the government? Is
it an executive role? Is it a legislative role? Is it a role in oversight?
The parliamentarian should be all of these in one, though the executive or material power is not in the hand of
the parliamentarian. In those cases when the government does not fulfil its commitment or its pledges for different
reasons, objectively or subjectively, the parliamentarian should carry out this function; the function of fulfilling
the pledges he made to the constituency. In this case, he faces a difficult dilemma. He has to adhere and fulfil
the commitments, does not possess the financial and material means to do so. Thus, the parliamentarian is in a
very embarrassing position and under major pressures, particularly if the pledges made were greater than realistically
achievable and in these cases we find that the constituency starts to lose confidence in the parliamentarians.
In a coming stage, they lose interest in the participation and electoral processes as a whole.
Thus, among the important points that we can make as recommendations in this forum is to consolidate the role of
Parliament to become an effective role in decision making. Members of Parliament are most in need of increasing
their awareness of being trained in how to be conscious of the importance of their role and how to carry out this
role and how to impose this role.
The second point in the loss of confidence is that though we have political pluralism in my country, and this is
very positive, and it came as a result of the reunification of Yemen, thus though we find political parties in
opposition and the national parties, all of them of course, and the ruling party, yet we find that there are tensions
in between these parties and the interaction between these parties. This is not only in imposing certain platforms
by different parties but sometimes we find that these tensions are the result of certain compromises by these political
parties, or opportunism even in some cases, on the part of some of these parties that might lead to certain political
parties giving up some of their convictions or main points on their platforms, be them in the ruling side or opposition.
Thus, we find that there are such compromises that might lead to abandoning certain convictions or certain platform
issues that they had presented before the constituency.
These concessions usually are made for certain subjective interests, for certain members or leaders of these political
parties. Thus, it is not in the interest of the people or the citizens that are the priorities of these political
parties. "The end justifies the means", becomes the slogan of politicians. Thus, I assume that there
is a lack of true political consciousness and a transition to some kind of political animalism. Thus, people will
become as a result of major skisms amongst parties, thus we will find that we have parties increasing in numbers
but smaller in weight and people thus lose their interest in the electoral system. People regard all parties as
similar, as two faces of the same coin, be they the ruling party or the opposition parties or which ever.
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