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Democracy Comes To Yemen
September 2006 brought an unprecedented development in the Middle East: The government of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh held open, contested presidential elections. Candidates were able to rally and campaign freely, each of the five candidates was given equal airtime on state-run television, and the international press and elections monitors were welcomed to Yemen to observe. This homegrown move toward democracy represents a remarkable political experiment that, if successful, will provide the region with a model of a state that is Arab, Islamic, genuinely democratic. Of course, the incumbent won. As the second-longest serving head of state in the Middle East, behind Libyas Muammar Gaddafi, it is not surprising Saleh was elected to serve another seven-year term. What is surprising is that, as an editorial in the Yemen Times put it following the elections; Yemen has "removed the 99 percent victor stereotype." Saleh got 77.2 percent of the vote, while his chief rival, the oil magnate Faisal bin Shamlan, received 21.8 percent. This is in sharp contrast to Yemens previous presidential "elections" in which Saleh received 96 percent of the vote. Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-10-23 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=169502 |