President Saleh’s 29-year election history [Archives:2006/977/Reportage]

By: Hamdan Dammag
President Ali Abdullah Saleh first was elected in 1978 and since has been re-elected. This report aims to highlight the various means and stages by which he was re-elected and Yemen's political situation at each stage.



Pre-1978

North Yemen became a battleground after President Ibrahim Al-Hamdi's 1977 assassination. Ahmad Al-Ghashmi succeeded him, but was in power only a few months before he too was assassinated. After Al-Ghashmi's assassination, the political situation in the north was very difficult and unstable as the army was in crisis and North Yemen was in a constitutional vacuum.

Political and army leadership agreed on June 24, 1978, to form a four-member Interim Presidential Council (IPC) until a new president could be elected. The IPC consisted of:

1. Qadi Abdul Karim Al-Arashi, head of the People's Assembly

2. Abdul Aziz Abdul-Ghani, Prime Minister

3. Ali Saleh Al-Shaybah, army Commander-in-Chief

4. Ali Abdullah Saleh, military commander of Taiz governorate



Saleh also was appointed Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. North Yemen's situation remained critical as military movements intensified on the North-South Yemen border. A propaganda war was raging and the army was pressuring Saleh to be the next president. According to National Information Center documents, some army officers threatened to arrest all IPC members and mount a coup if he didn't accept.



First election

Saleh was elected president of the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) on Monday, July 17, 1987, with a 75-vote majority from members of the People's Assembly (established by Al-Ghashmi as an alternative to Parliament, which was dissolved by Al-Hamdi's June 13 movement); consequently, the IPC was dissolved. Saleh also was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. It was the first time since the 1962 revolution that a Yemeni head of state was elected within a legal framework.



Re-election

Saleh was elected Secretary-General of the General People's Congress (GPC) on Aug. 30, 1982. The GPC was established as a political umbrella containing the majority of political forces in North Yemen at that time. Ending his first term, Saleh resigned the presidency, but the People's Assembly unanimously re-elected him May 23, 1983 to another five years as YAR president.



Second re-election

A June 4, 1988 republican decree was issued in North Yemen ordering the People's Assembly to prepare for elections of an alternative legislative council called the Shoura Council. The 159-member council was elected July 7 – 128 of whom were elected, while the president appointed 31 members. The Shoura Council re-elected Saleh to a third term on July 17, 1988.



New Yemen's Presidential Council

The Republic of Yemen was established May 22, 1990 by uniting the two formerly independent states of the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY).

According to the Unification Agreement, which was signed on the eve of Nov. 30, 1989, the newly formed Parliament consisted of all Shoura Council members (North Yemen) and the People's Assembly (South Yemen).

A five-member Presidential Council was to govern the republic for a transitional period until the first multi-party election. The president and vice president were elected at the first meeting and Parliament elected the five Presidential Council members, namely:

1. Ali Abdullah Saleh from the GPC

2. Ali Salim Al-Beidh from the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP)

3. Qadi Abdul Karim Al-Arashi from the GPC

4. Salim Saleh Mohamed from the YSP

5. Abdul Aziz Abdul-Ghani from the GPC



Accordingly, Saleh was elected Presidential Council chairman while Al-Beidh was vice chairman.

The Supreme Commission for Election and Referendum (SCER) was established in 1992 and preparations began for the first parliamentary election following Yemeni unification.



First elected Presidential Council

Election of the House of Representatives (Parliament) was held April 27, 1993, and declared “free and fair” by international observers. The YSP came in third after the GPC and the Islamic Islah party. The GPC won most seats but failed to secure an overall majority over the YSP.

Parliament extended the current Presidential Council period until Oct. 10, 1993, and on Oct. 11, 1993, Parliament elected a new five-member Presidential Council.

Islah (which had the second majority of seats in Parliament) was invited into the ruling coalition and the Presidential Council was altered to include one Islah member. The new Presidential Council consisted of:

1. Ali Abdullah Saleh from the GPC

2. Ali Salim Al-Beidh from the YSP

3. Abdul-Majid Al-Zindani from Islah

4. Salim Saleh Mohamed from the YSP

5. Abdul Aziz Abdul-Ghani from the GPC



Saleh was elected president of the council and Al-Beidh was vice president. The council was supposed to last five years but lasted only a year. Conflicts within the coalition resulted in Al-Beidh's self-imposed exile to Aden beginning in August 1993. Civil war erupted May 4, 1994 following months of tense relations between the president and vice president.



First elected president of the Republic of Yemen in 1994

Parliament issued a new constitutional law on Sept. 29, 1994, whereby a president and a vice president, the latter of whom was to be appointed by the president, replaced the Presidential Council.

Yemen's first elected Parliament elected Saleh as the republic's first president on Oct. 1, 1994. A coalition government consisting of the GPC and Islah was formed and lasted until the April 27, 1997 parliamentary election.



First direct presidential election in 1999

The Republic of Yemen conducted the first direct presidential election ever held on the Arabian Peninsula on Sept. 23, 1999. Winning more than 96 percent of the vote, Saleh returned to office for another five-year term.

The main opposition socialist party was barred from raising a candidate and the other candidate, Najeeb Qahtan Al-Sha'bi, also was a GPC member, despite running as an independent. International observers weren't satisfied with the way the election was organized or with the number of voters participating in the election.



Just before this election

Saleh's term in office was to end in September 2004, but a February 2001 referendum extended the presidential term from five to seven years, which is why the presidential election is this year.

In July 2005, Saleh announced that he wouldn't be a candidate in the next presidential election. The announcement came during 27th anniversary celebrations of his term in office as President of Yemen. However, Saleh reversed himself in June 2006 and accepted his nomination as the GPC presidential candidate. He is one of five candidates running for presidency but observers think that his main contestant is Faysal Bin Shamlan, the presidential candidate of the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) – the main opposition in the country.
——
[archive-e:977-v:14-y:2006-d:2006-08-31-p:report]