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Arabia

Democracy Comes To Yemen

2006-10-23

September 2006 brought an unprecedented development in the Middle East: The government of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh held open, contested presidential elections. Candidates were able to rally and campaign freely, each of the five candidates was given equal airtime on state-run television, and the international press and elections monitors were welcomed to Yemen to observe. This homegrown move toward democracy represents a remarkable political experiment that, if successful, will provide the region with a model of a state that is Arab, Islamic, genuinely democratic. Of course, the incumbent won. As the second-longest serving head of state in the Middle East, behind Libya’s Mu’ammar Gaddafi, it is not surprising Saleh was elected to serve another seven-year term. What is surprising is that, as an editorial in the Yemen Times put it following the elections; Yemen has "removed the 99 percent victor stereotype." Saleh got 77.2 percent of the vote, while his chief rival, the oil magnate Faisal bin Shamlan, received 21.8 percent. This is in sharp contrast to Yemen’s previous presidential "elections" in which Saleh received 96 percent of the vote.

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Arabia

Yemeni Opposition Threatens to Seethe

2006-09-23

SAN'A, Yemen (AP) - Yemeni opposition parties threatened Friday to call a massive street protest to dispute partial election results that show their presidential candidate losing by a wider margin than expected. The threat came amid more allegations of fraud in Wednesday's elections, which pitted incumbent President Ali Abdullah Saleh against his most serious challenger since he came to power in 1978 - former oil executive Faisal bin Shamlan. Late Thursday, elections commission spokesman Abdu al-Janadi said Saleh had so far won 3.4 million votes, compared with just 880,000 for bin Shamlan out of roughly 5 million cast. The partial results were based on votes counted from 17,000 of the 27,000 total ballot boxes. Election results are expected by Saturday, but it is not clear whether a formal announcement will come in view of the disputes.

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Arabia

Yemen arrests ‘major terrorist’ over US attack plot

2006-09-20

Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh announced Tuesday the arrest of a “terrorist” - allegedly linked to his main election rival and to Osama bin Laden - accused of plotting attacks against US interests. “We have arrested a major terrorist who was planning operations against American installations and the Movenpick hotel,” Saleh said at a press conference on the eve of the presidential poll. He said the suspect was a bodygard for Faisal bin Shamlan, his main challenger in Wednesday’s presidential race. Saleh’s private secretary Abdo Burji said the suspect, Hussein al-Jerdani, was arrested on Sunday and had close links with the Al Qaeda terror chief. “He was a companion of Osama bin Laden and is the owner of a house rented to a cell which recently tried to launch attacks against oil installations in Yemen,” Burji added. Four bombers and a security guard were killed Friday when Yemeni security forces foiled twin suicide bombings against an oil refinery in Maarib, in the desert east of the capital Sanaa, and a Canadian-run terminal in the port of Dhabba on the Gulf of Aden. The government announced Saturday the arrest of four Yemeni “terrorists” linked to Al Qaeda who it said was planning attacks on Sanaa. Friday’s attacks came after bin Laden’s right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri warned that the Gulf and Israel would be the next targets of Al Qaeda, in a video message coinciding with the fifth anniversary Monday of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

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Arabia

Yemeni opposition names single presidential candidate

2006-07-03

SANA’A - Yemeni opposition parties on Sunday named a single candidate to challenge long-serving President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the presidential elections planned for next September. Leaders of five main opposition parties voted at a meeting in the capital Sana’a to field independent politician Faisal bin Shamlan, 72, as their sacrificial lamb joint candidate for the presidential vote. So who do we like here? Grouped under the umbrella of the Joint Meeting Grouping, the five parties include the leading Islamic-oriented Islah party and a communist party that ruled South Yemen for 12 years before the country merged with North Yemen in 1990. Bin Shamlan is widely respected, particularly in the southern provinces of this impoverished Arab country, for his public stands against corruption. He served as an oil and infrastructure minister in South Yemen. After the reunification, he was appointed oil minister in 1994, but he resigned one year later to protest corruption in the oil industry sector. Yemen is a small oil producer which pumps some 470,000 barrels per day. Although a dozen of politicians have announced an intention to run for the presidential elections, bin Shamlan is expected to be the main rival of incumbent President Saleh in the presidential polls. Saleh, who has been at the helm since 1978, announced last week that he would seek re-election, having lied about retracting a promise to step down he made last year.

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