Legitimacy and combating corruption chaos!

After a long time, the virus of corruption has spread openly in the body of the Yemeni legitimacy, which is determined, after a long wait, to adopt a firm stance and expose this epidemic publicly after great secrecy and multiple concealments to the point of inability to cover up.

The size of the challenges and obstacles facing legitimacy appears to be on one side; corruption is on the other side, which has control and influence, and constitutes the greatest obstacle to achieving any tangible progress that is credited to the work of the state and the legitimate authority as a whole. The absence of oversight and accountability bodies played an effective role in expanding its scope and diversifying its area, in addition to the consensus formula on which legitimacy was built, which weakened the corruption’s submission to accountability and their rebellion against authority, and their tampering with the state’s capabilities and revenues.

Three successive governments have left their leadership with serious irregularities and horrific waste, not at the ministerial level, but in a sequential manner, each according to what is available and under his authority, so that this chaos has led to a complete failure in the government’s performance, a total collapse of the currency, the disruption of the state budget, and a scarcity of its revenues that go into the pockets of the corrupt tycoons and their small and large leaders.

Questions were raised day after day about the weakness and economic collapse accompanying the legitimate authority, and the pretext was that anyone who hesitated to launch accusations of corruption and was fed up with the work of officials would be silenced in several ways, including dividing the national ranks or accusing him of working for the militias or tarnishing the reputation of the Yemeni legitimacy that is working in difficult circumstances. However, the Leadership Council recently realized that all these pretexts do not exempt it from the responsibility of accountability and oversight, and tracking the threads of corruption in every ministry, institution and government department; since these tasks are among its constitutional priorities and legal powers to preserve the management of the authority and save it from the imminent failure that is almost destroying it and leading it to collapse.

Corruption may be the ghost behind the deterioration of the local currency, whether through the looting of billions and smuggling them abroad in hard currency or by investing them in private projects at home. Deposits have not been able to put an end to this deterioration because they are devoured by the financial markets in a short period of time, and those responsible for these corruption operations are from the core of the state and its leaders who exploit their positions to cover up their corruption and exceed all their powers.

If we look closely at the literature on the political process and its many crises over the decades, we will find that corruption is the most dangerous reason behind its failure to bring about any economic or living improvement or to move the wheel of construction and development in the country that is being killed by poverty and butted by deficit, while the officials who run these poor institutions appear to be satiated to the bone, contrary to what they promote about their institutions, which are known for their weak income and meager expenditures.

The Presidential Leadership Council and the Prime Minister can take firm corrective steps to combat corruption, by activating the role of oversight and legal accountability institutions and organizing resources, activating special committees within each ministry, institution and government department, and reducing the powers of quotas so that their concept does not exceed the concepts of institutionalism and regulations. They can use corruption as a pressure force through which any arrogance shown by any political party or component that sets itself up as a state that possesses all powers and is not subject to oversight and accountability can be extinguished. When the smell of corruption and failure wafts, the government appears as concerned before the people, and the corrupt party evades bearing the consequences of its administration under the pretext of quotas or giving consideration to the Council and the Prime Minister.

The lack of legitimacy for institutional work and the principle of transparency and integrity and the sufficiency of a political process without having an executive management or sovereign capacity to control the way government institutions perform and operate, given what partnership requires and quotas require and political consensus is governed by, all of these reasons have given corruption a free ground to expand and spread and seize the lion’s share of revenues.

We do not want the anti-corruption campaign launched by the Leadership Council or the Presidency of the Government to fall under the purview of the wings within the legitimacy and to be exploited in the media by each wing to prove its superiority and confirm its powers in front of the other. Rather, we want it to be a real reform process and a comprehensive strategy that works to discover the roots of corruption transparently and track its forms with credibility and idealism. Otherwise, matters will get worse and corruption will take the path of bickering and pretending to be honest, and the process of exposing its citizen will become nothing more than arm-twisting and political blackmail, nothing more and nothing less.

This people has endured all kinds of oppression, crises, the squandering of their rights and the loss of their resources, and now they are in dire need of wise leadership and national responsibility that seeks to consolidate the principle of integrity, efficiency and job rotation, and to select the most suitable and worthy to assume positions instead of relying on failed leaderships that come based on the recommendations of a party or entity or the imposition of consensus and external support that approves names that are not worthy of performing their duties.

The administrative work style based on favoritism must be changed and the principle of competition in integrity, seriousness, and commitment to the regulations and laws regulating the work of each institution must be opened, far from the bullying of performance and the quota system of choice, so that the political leadership and the presidency of the government have the right to choose honest figures capable of presenting a better image of the administration and bringing about tangible change, and not exploiting problems and using them as a pretext to justify its failure and corruption.

Corruption is the greatest internal enemy that destroys the structure of the state, disrupts its authority, highlights its inability, presents a hopeless internal and external image of legitimacy, and strips it of the confidence of regional and international donors and supporters who are fed up with the rampant corruption and indifference to improving the performance of legitimacy and its sinking alone in the swamp of inability, and the abandonment of its supporters and economic backers, and that support will be limited to politics only.

The Houthi enemy has used all the characteristics of failure and corruption of the legitimate authority as evidence to convince those who rule them that the areas under its control are experiencing better living conditions, stable currency exchange rates, and the absence of corruption to justify its tyranny and continued suppression of them. Therefore, we must not give it the opportunity to boast and act illogically arrogantly. Our legitimacy must realize its national responsibility at the most difficult moment in Yemeni history, and be keen to restore the confidence of its people in it, and resolve to address all the problems resulting from corruption and expose them strictly and firmly, and hold all those involved accountable and freeze their assets inside and outside the country, and form general and special committees that report to the council personally, in addition to activating the Central Agency for Control and Accounting. Whoever rejects these reforms must be confronted, whether they are individuals, parties, or political factions, because the situation is on the verge of collapse and cannot tolerate any leniency or deception, and it will lose its ability to control it; As long as it ignores the hotbeds of corruption, its sources and those who cover it up, the people will stand by it and support the reform options it will take, as the country faces a turbulent and worrying existential fate, and all its hopes and goals are hanging on the neck of its legitimacy and its national leadership.