Heisenberg and the Yemeni Political Uncertainty!

The German national and the 1932 Noble Prize winner in Physics, Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) is considered to be one of the greatest physicists of all time. He was one of the pioneers of Quantum Physics: the theory that allowed humanity to understand the micro-world (atomic and subatomic world). His most important contribution came in a paper in 1927 titled “The Uncertainty Principle” which states that “The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum (velocity) is known and vice versa”.

That is to say: in the micro-world it is physically impossible for mankind to measure both the position and the momentum of a particle simultaneously, not because of the limitation of us humans but because of the nature of the system itself.  Looking at Yemeni politics these days made me recall Heisenberg’s principle. I guess, it must be the parallelism that exists between this physical principle and Yemeni politics that brought back Heisenberg to my mind.

Subatomic particles exhibit this rather weird phenomenon of not allowing the observer the ability to know their position and momentum at the same time. Yemeni politicians are just the same as if they were subatomic entities. A political observer today is not able to precisely pinpoint Yemeni political positions and momenta simultaneously. Our politicians are becoming conundrums by the day. Once you see them in a specific position, you are not able to decide on their momentum regarding their agenda. When you see a political movement with a specific momentum, you are not able to know where it is heading. Political positions keep interchanging and political momenta undergo continuous acceleration-deceleration mixture.

This does not happen only between political groups and parties, but also within each group and party ranking members. For example, one can witness members of the ruling party joining the opposition today, only to find out that they disassociate themselves from the opposition tomorrow. Another example is the miserable economic performance of the Government which simply defeats the very purpose of its existence: to serve the people.  A third example is the mind boggling political behavior of the Consultative Meeting Group (CMG). They are supposedly a large opposition group against the Government calling for more democracy and human rights, yet their top leadership is so undemocratic it rules the CMG as if it was family owned. Some of their leaders are as undemocratic as it gets. They are trying hard to block the upcoming April 2011 parliamentary elections. Apparently, they think that if the elections are blocked, the chance for regime collapse is greater and they may be able to seize power.

God, what a dumb line of thinking is that? If for whatever unseen reason the regime collapses, it will do so on all heads particularly theirs. Yemen history has shown time and again that a minimally required level of order (statehood) has always been there even in much more difficult circumstances than the one we are witnessing now (i.e. Yemen history teaches us that the state will not collapse). Therefore, those daytime nightmare dreamers should be proven wrong and the elections should take place, as they must. 

* Moustafa Bahran (Professor of Physics, qmbahran@yahoo.com) 

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