Crises in Parliament [Archives:2006/918/Front Page]

Mustafa Rajeh
SANA'A, Feb. 5 ) Members of Parliament were informed suddenly last Saturday of postponement of its first session by a week. The session was scheduled to elect the Speaker, his deputies and the Parliament board together with parliamentary committees. The proceedings were meant to implement new amendments replacing the Speaker's previous six-year term of office with three periods of two years each.

Sources indicated discrepancies leading to the postponement, attributing it to personal and political differences. However, the parliamentary bloc of the ruling party, the General People's Congress (GPC), had nominated Sheikh Al-Ahmar (president of the opposition Islah party), who still is in Saudi Arabia for medical treatment. Sources said he will undergo a gallbladder operation and then complete his medical examination.

Under-the-table divisions over the election method have leaked out. Al-Ahmar insisted he would not run in the election unless he was the only nominee, as he preferred to be chosen by Parliament uncontested. GPC sources said regulations stipulate the nominee's presence. The GPC parliamentary bloc is expected to meet by the end of this week to inform its members of the decision to re-elect Al-Ahmar. However, the posts of deputies and committee heads were not determined.

Indications point to the split over parliamentary posts as an extension of conflicts between influential GPC members who experienced severe strife over the General Secretary's post at their seventh conference last month in Aden. Prominent personalities lost their Central Committee positions, including Foreign Minister Abu Bakr Al-Qirbi and Al-Ahmar's son, Hussein. Hussein's loss was considered a message to Al-Ahmar, whose differences with the president have become public in the past few months.

The GPC announcement to nominate Al-Ahmar followed a meeting of the two men in Aden during the Eid holiday. After this meeting, Al-Ahmar declared his support of President Saleh's candidacy in September's elections.

Despite the fact that Al-Ahmar heads the Islah party, he has been an important ally of the president since coming to power in North Yemen in 1978. Despite soured relations in the past six years over U.S. relations, the War on Terror and differing stances on Islah after it became an opposition party, the two men remain important allies.
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