Opposition to participate in upcoming elections [Archives:2006/955/Front Page]
By: Mustafa Rajeh
SANA'A, June 13 ) After a lengthy period involving failing dialogue and swinging between participating and not participating in failing dialogue, the authority and the opposition agreed to add two Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) members to the Supreme Commission for Elections and Referendum (SCER) and divide field committees with 52 percent for the General People's Congress (GPC) and 48 percent for opposition.
After months of failing dialogue due to opposition demands for SCER reform and commitment to holding impartial elections, Yemeni political life recently has witnessed a detente. The detente came about after a small committee including Abdulqader Bajammal, the GPC General Secretariat and General Secretariats of Islah, the Socialist and the Nasserite parties met and agreed upon an initial deal involving adding two members from a sub-list of eight to the SCER. Current SCER law dictates that the president select seven members from a list of 15 personnel selected by Parliament.
Increasing the number of SCER members to nine and executing such political agreement on the part of parties requires a legal amendment or replacing two members of the existing committee if the law was not amended. Opposition parties are represented by three members on the sub-list: the Nasserite Unionist Party's Abdullah Dahan and Islah's Saif Mohammed Saleh and Hamoud Al-Dharhi.
Sponsored and attended by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the deal also included distributing the quota of committees running elections as 52 percent for the GPC and 48 percent for opposition. Other parties will be allocated four percent by cutting two percent from each side.
As for the registration stage recently made, the parties agreed on forming small committee of barristers and law men representing both sides. The committee is intended to correct the vote register and cancelling names of underage voters. Other committee is to be formed as well to formulate guarantees demanded by the opposition including the impartiality of public media, public money and the army. This agreement is expected to be declared following the committees end their tasks.
In this regards, there have been indications that the opposition parties will participate in elections due to be held in September, after it had been unclear whether they will participate or not.
Dr. Yasin Saeed Nouman, a prominent opposition leader anticipated to run for presidency, said that the agreement is an initial step in the dialogue of parties involved in the political arena for securing participation in free and impartial elections. He also assured that there is an agreement to re-reform the SCER following the upcoming elections. Dr. Nouman also noted that JMP has called upon its authorities to meet.
It is expected that the Central Committee of the Yemeni Socialist Party will hold a meeting in the few days to come. In the mean time, the Central Committee of Naserite Party is going to meet on June 21.
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