Had president Saleh been serious in implementing the political program announced on March 10th, 201, at a meeting held in Sana’a, it could’ve been possible for him to rectify the current situation of the country. On that day, president Saleh announced a program consisted of number of points the most important one was to call for drafting a new constitution adopting the parliamentary system under which an early parliamentary and presidential elections to take place at the end of this year.

In his speech, he said that his Initiative was directed to the Yemeni people because he, as he said, is expecting the opposition to refuse it. The president would have won the local and international support if he were serious to implement his Initiative and he was able to do that through entrusting an independent committee, formed from constitutional and legal figures known for their integrity and national loyalty, to work on drafting the new constitution. Further, to the local and international support, the president would’ve crammed the opposition in a tight corner and because of such pressure the opposition will have to participate in carrying out this initiative and Yemen will be away from such current catastrophic situation, even if the youth remain at the change squares to guarantee the early elections and the new constitution. But what happened, unfortunately, is that the initiative was folded at once and the regime prepared for massacres which started on Friday march 18th. This massacre undermined the regime and ended its legitimacy and turned it into just a family defends its existence with the power of its military and security forces dominated by the president’s sons and relatives.
 

In this regard, it always occurs to me to compare this important initiative, which president Saleh announced and dissolved it at the same time, with a similar initiative on March 9th, one day before president Saleh’s speech by King of Morocco, Mohamed the 6th, with regard to amending the Moroccan Constitution and the assignment of many of his powers to the government. At the beginning this initiative was objected by most of the Moroccan political powers fearing it could only be guile. But because King Mohammed was serious in his initiative to avoid what happened in Tunis and Egypt and what was happening n Libya, he went on the initiative without turning to the political powers that objected the initiative. The King proved his credibility with real amendments in the constitution carried out by a respected committee and announced them on next June, and then he invited the people to a referendum on these amendments. With this historical achievement the political parties had no choice but to welcome it and take part in it, and the king succeeded in turning his country to a constitutional monarchy. Despite his young age, the king proved that he is wiser than other Arab leaders older than him and have been in power for longer period than his for he took his country to the safe side. The Moroccan people overwhelmingly participated in the referendum and soon the parliamentary elections will take place while we, Yemenis, are still suffering the ruling shortsightedness, wrong estimating and its myopic to understand the changes.
                  
Until this moment, Thursday morning Nov. 19th, president Saleh is still making up conditions to sign the Gulf initiative which spoiled him and guaranteed him an honorable stepping down of power. The International Community, as the Yemenis did, has realized that president Saleh has exhausted, during the 33 years, all he can do to Yemen and that change has become an urgent demand on the national, regional and international levels. If president Saleh remains in power that will lead Yemen to more destruction especially after the consecutive setbacks on all levels particularly in the last seven years. The economic, political, social and security conditions in Yemen can no more bear any further difficulties especially after Yemen has become a true failure state due to its failure in meeting the requirements of: the Millennium Fund, the International Fund and Bank, the donors’ conference in London 2006, joining more GCC institutions in order to get the full membership. Add to this, the president couldn’t succeed in achieving a peace agreement with the Houthis in Sa’dah governorate, north Yemen, and refused all the proposed solutions to solve the riots in the southern governorates, let alone the corruption, the chaos in most aspects of public life, the political deficit when he yielded to delay the parliamentary elections in 2009 after he refused to amend the rules of the electoral process to be more just in spite of all the international pressures that time.

These were the failures of president Saleh’s regime and no one of the wise men around the president could stop him, while Saleh, on the other hand, was working on extending himself in the power and preparing his son to succeed him later depending on some myopic persons which caused him a political confusion in the local and international levels. The last confusion was the hesitant and contradictory stand towards signing the Gulf initiative and its executive mechanism which stand may lead the regime to an inevitable encounter with the Yemeni people and with the local and international community in case the regime continue to delay the implementation of the UN resolution issued by the Security council on October 21st 2011.                      

It’s hard, in the moment, to predict the stand of the UN Security Council in case Jamal Benomar, Envoy of the Secretary General, left Yemen without signing the Gulf initiative especially after it has become clear that it’s the president Saleh and his family, not any other party, who disrupt the signature of the gulf initiative by making up new conditions despite the leaks of the possibility of signing the Gulf initiative on Saturday in Riyadh. While the regional and international community deal with president Saleh with much spoiling in order to avoid the armed conflict, it seems that this spoiling will be the main reason for the armed conflict to resolve the situation. The Yemenis may, also, reach a point to prefer the armed struggle than the peaceful to achieve the goals of their revolution, especially after the extensive sectarian, regional and partial discrimination of the regime in Sa’dah and Hajjah, north Yemen, Aden and Abyan, south Yemen, and in Taiz in the middle of Yemen, the city which Saleh deals with it with the most harsh power considering it the spark of the public revolution and the spirit of the developmental civic project Yemenis dream of since the thirties of the last century. Unless the world and the gulf countries, especially KSA, have a firm stand against president Saleh’s delay in signing the Gulf initiative then they must be responsible of what may be called “the labors before departure” and the change in which these countries will have no hand in it taking into our minds that the Yemeni people have got out seeking change and will never go back with out it.