SANA’A: Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been re-elected as expected, but the opposition gained new ground in elections earlier this week. The Supreme Commission for Elections and Referendum (SCER) has given Saleh 82 per cent of the vote against 16 per cent for his biggest challenger Faisal bin Shamlan.
Shamlan was picked as candidate by the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) of the opposition to challenge Saleh and his General Peoples Congress (GPC) party. The other candidates were Yasin Abdul Saeed of the National Council of Opposition, another opposition group, and two independents Fatahi al-Azab and Ahmad Abdullah al-Majeedi.
Opposition members were challenging the SCER figures on Friday, claiming a larger share of the vote for Shamlan. Saleh in any case won by a wide enough margin, but the competition was hotter than Saleh or the GPC had expected. Some opposition leaders accused the ruling GPC of kidnapping 46 opposition activists, pressuring voters to make their choice public, and paying for votes in support of the ruling party.
“The ruling party used all state facilities to win the election, but it could not defeat the opposition completely as it had promised,” opposition leader Ali al-Sarari told IPS. GPC ruling assembly deputy chairman Sultan al-Barakani said the opposition “always wails over their failure”, and that the opposition is simply not strong enough to pose any worry for the ruling party.
The European Union election observation mission to Yemen expressed regret over the killing of three people on polling day. It spoke of shortcomings such as overcrowding at booths, breaches of vote secrecy, illegal assistance to voters, and ineligible voters, but said that the election was overall “open and genuine”.
“EU observers positively evaluated voting procedures in 82 per cent of polling centres visited in spite of a large number of irregularities observed,” member of the European Parliament and chief observer of the mission Baroness Emma Nicholson said in a statement. The EU deployed 119 observers at 349 voting centres in 17 of the 21 provinces. The mission noted the low number of women who contested the local elections that accompanied the presidential election. Only 149 women contested in the local elections compared to 20,512 male candidates.
“High levels of illiteracy amongst women contributed to their limited awareness of and participation in the electoral process,” the EU mission said. The election also won US endorsement. Yemeni Minister for Foreign Affairs Abu Bakr al-Qirbi met US President George Bush at the 61st United Nations General Assembly. “Yemeni democracy is excellent and the US will support it,” Bush is reported to have told him. The GPC has been the ruling party in Yemen, a nation of 21 million, for the last 28 years. Saleh has now been elected for a seven-year term. Shamlan’s group campaigned to point to the poverty and corruption within the country under GPC rule. But Shamlan could not campaign as extensively — and as expensively — as the ruling party for lack of financial backing.
The contest meant huge election rallies, campaigning over loudspeakers round the clock and a poster campaign that plastered walls in towns and villages across the country. Most of this kind of campaigning came from the GPC. The last presidential election was held in 1997. The Islah party, a strong Islamic party, had then supported Saleh. But this time Islah joined the opposition against Saleh in the hope of “a real transfer of power.” It could not, however, shake Saleh’s hold. Saleh has made extensive efforts to fight terrorism, and strengthened military and economic cooperation with the United States, Saudi Arabia and the Horn of Africa countries that includes Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. That relationship with the United States is now expected to continue.—Dawn/IPS News Service
