On the road to democracy?

The democratic experience of nations should show that we are really learning from our experiences and that we are taking into consideration the experiences of other nations, in the course they have taken towards improving the democratic process and towards delegating more political power to the people. Regrettably, however, in the Arab World, we are actually moving away from the democratic process and instilling certain practices, which actually seem to be an intentional mockery of democracy and a total disregard, if not disrespect for the will of the people. Even in the Arab countries that have adopted democracy and political pluralism, we seem to believe that we can lie to the whole world and nobody will ever realize the difference or really care. Time and again, we have pointed out that the Arab World can never achieve any meaningful progress, if our rulers do not realize that they simply will have to change their ways and start to look more like the rulers of states, which we consider as our enemies, but find their citizens enjoying greater freedom and more respect for the public at large than their counterparts in most of the Arab World. To put it simply, if we are to have elections, then we should have real elections, rather than waste billions of Yemeni Riyals or other Arab currencies, on a process that does not produce any enrichment for the democratic process, enhance the right of the people to decide on who rules them, and instill the principle of a peaceful transfer of authority. Moreover, any process that is merely exploited to channel public funds towards the pockets of a few, who are already wealthy, tends to indicate that there are no limits to the ways that the Arab people will be exploited by a very small minority. Ironically, this is being done by people, who are assumed to be highly educated and cultured, and are fully aware of how true democracies really operate and this is the sad paradox in the way we are "adopting democracy". The point to make here is that one does not expect an overnight transformation to full democratic practice, although there is really no reason why the Arab people, after suffering so many years of repressive rule, should not deserve such a transformation. However, at least there should be some trend to show that we are moving in the right direction, towards understanding what human and civil rights are all about and how to get the democratic process engrained into our daily lives, and not just in the determination of the important government positions; i.e., we should see democratic instilled in internal partisan and institutional activity. To date, most Arab governments have yet to take into consideration the fact that they are far behind many other countries that have truly understood what democratic practice is all about, even among some poorer and economically and socially more backward nations. Many of them still find it easier to instill the most constraining laws against democratic institutions and practices, rather than laws to strengthen democratic activity. As though these lawmakers in these countries have been given this God-given right to keep their people under bondage, and still have the audacity to state that "democratic behavior must be regulated", in order to instill freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of political organization, etc. Thus, while all these expressions are resounded day and night by the official public media of many of the so called progressive Arab regimes, the fact of the matter, is that most Arab states are further away from true democratic practice than they have ever been in the past. The sad part is that this fact continues to be viewed as merely the criticism inspired by a desire to gain political power by the critics. If we continue to reject criticism by any of the citizens, even if it seeks to gain political prominence for the critics, then we clearly have shown that we are not willing to include others in the political process, except those same faces that we have been seeing almost for two generations. The people have a right to at least get to see some newer faces, if for nothing, except for improvement of the image of the country, no more ... no less.

Regrettably, however, in the Arab World, we are actually moving away from the democratic process and instilling certain practices, which actually seem to be an intentional mockery of democracy and a total disregard, if not disrespect for the will of the people. Even in the Arab countries that have adopted democracy and political pluralism, we seem to believe that we can lie to the whole world and nobody will ever realize the difference or really care.

There may be some hope for the people of Yemen. If only the rest of the arab world would catch on to this. It's call democracy people of arabia....look into it!!

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