Job seekers to form voter register committees [Archives:2006/931/Front Page]

Mustafa Ragih
SANA'A, March 22 ) The Supreme Commission for Elections and Referendum (SCER) announced the names of electoral committees responsible for voter registration and checking voter lists in preparation for September 23 presidential elections.

Audiovisual media and the official Al-Thora newspaper published names of potential committee members culled from civil service job seeker lists given to the SCER last Monday. This step followed failure of dialogue between the SCER and opposition parties to reach a compromise on committee allotments and the SCER itself.

Opposition parties demand the SCER be cancelled, following its proven bias to the ruling party in previous elections. An opposition source confirmed that two SCER members considered opposition sympathizers will not resign. They are deputy committee head Abdullah Al-Akwa', considered an Islah party member, and Salim Al-Khamabashi, thought to be a Socialist party member.

The conflict was over whether the SCER should be dissolved or three names from the Joint Meeting Parties be added to it. This is in addition to differences over subcommittee allotments, which will run elections at 5,000 electoral centers.

SCER members announced that allocations that would have been their responsibility – which constituted one-third of the committees – were cancelled and transferred to job seekers as a source of forming all of the committees. As stipulated by law, this step should begin six months before the president calls on voters to vote, which will be in July. Abdulmomen Shoja'a Al-Deen said the committee only began work a month before.

This procedure prevents ways for speculation about an agreement between the ruling party and opposition during the few moments before the SCER starts the registration process. In addition, it opened confrontation prospects between the government and opposition, which threatened public protests, sit-ins and demonstrations if the ruling party did not respond to their demands to cancel the SCER and run elections via a fair and impartial electoral administration.
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