THE ELECTION IS OVER, WHAT NEXT? [Archives:1999/39/Front Page]

SANAA: On Saturday night at 10:00 pm, the official announcement stating that Ali Abdullah Saleh won the first direct presidential election of Yemen came out. It was 96.3% for Saleh and 3.7% for Al-Shaabi. The other candidate, Najeeb Qahtan Al-Shaabi, as expected, got much fewer voices. The official statistics say that 3,577,438 out of the 5,591,422 eligible voters actually voted, without specifying the effective distribution of voters. These numbers were contradictory to reports of some monitoring groups. As in all elections procedures, the elections of last Thursday also included some violence. In Sanaa, 2 people were killed and several injured. In Mareb, tribesmen did not allow the election committee to place the election boxes and ballots and start the voting procedures. Any way, the president’s win was great, however, there are mighty challenges ahead of him in the coming presidential period. the president will have to deal with a lot of issues that are devastating our economy. Yemeni people have trusted in him in the hope that he will bring them prosperity. He got their trust and votes. Now it is his turn to give. He must prove that he is worth the Yemeni people’s trust. Let it be a new beginning, and let us have hope that our president will fulfill his promises. 
In general, these are the problems facing our president in his coming period:  More in law and Diplomacy page.
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