Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [57]
“It doesn’t speak highly of their wives that they never want to go home,” I say to Luke.
“Well, if your wife was uneducated and illiterate, with no interest in politics and no conversational topics beyond the children and the next meal, would you be in a rush to get home?” he says.
ONE FRIDAY, I have a chance to work on my delicate relationship with al-Asaadi and learn a bit more about Yemeni politics when he invites me to a journalists’ qat chew. The focus is to be democracy and the imminent elections. This group of journalists chews together every week, in rotating locations. This week it is in the tented mafraj on the roof of the Yemen Observer building, which disappoints me as I am not anxious to spend any more time at work. Al-Asaadi picks me up at Sabri’s, and we arrive at the office to find Faris’s car outside.
“Great,” I say. “He’s going to try to make us work!”
I run up to the roof and take my seat next to al-Asaadi. Ten journalists are seated in the tent, all men. They work for a variety of media outlets, including al-Jazeera, several Yemeni Arabic-language papers, a Saudi paper, and the Yemen Observer. On the way there, I had asked al-Asaadi if the men would mind having a woman join the group. “They loooove having a woman join the group!” he said. Ibrahim, whom I’ve come to think of as Mr. Front Page because he reliably helps fill page one, sits on the other side of me. None of the other journalists speaks English, but al-Asaadi and Ibrahim translate things I don’t understand.
Al-Asaadi has brought qat for me and shows me how to pick only the tenderest and prettiest leaves to chew. The big glossy leaves are too tough and hurt the gums.
Before the session, I run into Faris, who pulls me aside. “Jennifer, don’t chew too much qat,” he says, looking grim. “It isn’t good for you. There are pesticides, and it’s bad for your teeth.”
“Don’t worry,” I reassure him. “I don’t do too much of anything.”
After some initial persiflage, the men fall into serious, focused discussions about the elections and fatwahs and democracy.
On paper, Yemen is a constitutional democracy, with executive, legislative, and judicial branches of its government. The president is head of state and the prime minister head of government. A 301-seat elected parliament and a 111-seat president-appointed Shura Council make up the legislative branch. Yemen has notional separation of powers. It has regular elections to the presidency, parliament, and local government. It has genuine pluralism. Any constitutional change requires a popular referendum. Which is more democracy than exists in any other country in the Arabian Peninsula.
But all is not quite as it seems.
While Yemen’s government has many superficial resemblances to the checks and balances prevalent in developed Western democracies, in practice, parliament is little more than a tool of the executive. Saleh’s party, the General People’s Congress or al-Mu’tamar Party, wields nearly all of the power. Saleh uses parliament to stall legislation he doesn’t want. The judiciary is corrupt and manipulated for political purposes by the regime. Big decisions are made by the president and not by ministers. A small ruling elite prevents decisions that are in the best interests of the country from being made, so as to protect their own vested interests. For example, costly fuel subsidies encourage oil smuggling, from which corrupt presidential allies benefit. Oil subsidies also help big qat producers, who include friends of the president, as diesel pumps are used for water to irrigate the crop.
There’s no question Saleh will win reelection, though he is campaigning with the ruthlessness of an underdog. I’m amazed at the bitterness and viciousness of his attacks on his opponent. Does he truly believe negative campaigning is necessary when he has the election all but sewn up?
True, things are a bit tougher for him now than they were in the 1999 election.