Recent media leaks of scholarship lists, which are funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in the government of the so-called legitimacy, showed the names of government officials' sons and influential at the top of lists of scholarships allocated for Yemeni students abroad. Such favoritism comes at the expense of talented students who actually deserve these paid seats, which forced some of legitimate students to study at the expense of their families residing abroad.
In fact, the government spends millions of dollars on scholarships that are not subject to any criteria for granting scholarships, including fair competition and selecting the critical specializations that the country needs. Favoritism and influence played an active role in granting it to students who did not deserve it in the first place, while the financial conditions of their families could cover its costs in the universities to which they were sent. However, gluttony, greed, and banditry led the legitimate government officials to steal the allocations of the outstanding students, after they have swallowed everything on land and sea.
The corruption of scholarships was not discovered by the regulatory body or the judiciary. Rather, it was leaked by people from the same parties, whose interests conflicted with each other, so they published this dirty laundry. Despite this, the judiciary and the oversight agencies of the legitimate government did not move a finger on similar issues in the past years, including suspending scholarships financial allocations for students on scholarships at various universities, while they did not stop it on the sons of the government officials and influential people. Moreover, the government did not hold accountable ambassadors and media attaches who gained from playing with the entitlement lists and the deductions that it had witnessed, nor did it summon the ambassador who called the police to remove the complaining students from the embassy’s courtyard after their protests against these abuses.
For decades, the regime worked to produce its own philosophy of corruption, and the officials in the current legitimate government structure came from this corrupt environment, in which officials were not used to being held accountable, and that the files that were opened from time to time were used by the government agencies to blackmail people, and employing them in an endless series of networks and maximizing interests within the colorful bodies of corruption.
The exploitation of scholarships is part of the corruption of a larger system in the civil and military institutions, which are run by people who lack competence and integrity. Besides, the quotas in sharing the public office for regional, sectarian and partisan bases is the foundation that has a deep root in the life of society, which is intended to remain in the storm of lawlessness, chaos and strife so that the system of corruption and its militia arms continue to dominate everyone’s life.
The division of power, between north and south, is the dependent of the institution of historical corruption in Yemen. Therefore, corruption, in its soft and coarse levels and aspects, is the real common denominator in its overall structure, so there is no real enmity between them, and their common enemy is the entire society, which is stolen, starved, and whose hopes for change have been confiscated.
