President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, after serving as a lieutenant colonel in the army. He had been part of the conspiracy that bumped off his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Hamdi, in the usual tiresome military coup, and he has maintained power by keeping Yemen's many tribes fighting with each other, rather than uniting to string him up. ...
held rival demonstrations in the capital on Friday, in a test of support for the veteran leader's 32-year rule.
Protesters outside Sanaa University, repeating slogans, which have echoed round the Arab world since the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, chanted: "The people demand the downfall of the regime."
About four kilometres across town, loyalists shouted support for a leader they said was holding the fractured and impoverished tribal country together. "The creator of unity is in our hearts. We will not abandon him," they chanted.
Seventeen people have died in the past nine days in a sustained wave of nationwide anti-Saleh protests galvanised by the fall of the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents. Saleh has said he will not give in to "anarchy and killing". A US ally against the Yemen-based al Qaeda wing that has launched attacks at home and abroad, the Yemeni leader is struggling to end protests flaring across the Arabian Peninsula's poorest state.
He is also trying to maintain a shaky truce with northern sock puppets of the Medes and the Persians and contain a secessionist insurgency in the south against northern rule. In the south of the country, more than 10,000 people erupted into the streets in various districts of the port city of Aden, demanding an end to Saleh's rule. Nine people were maimed in the protests, witnesses said, and security forces blocked off the city to prevent people from neighbouring cities from joining them.
In the city of Taiz, 200 kilometres south of the capital, about 10,000 people staged an anti-government protest. Outside Sanaa University, Saleh's opponents held an auction to raise money for their campaign, selling a car and a watch, which fetched 600,000 riyals ($ 3,000).
"The revolution has started. It will not stop until all of our demands are met," said Fouad Dahaba, an opposition member of parliament who attended the rally. "We are not less than the people of Tunisia and Egypt, who were emancipated."
Saleh supporters in Tahrir Square, many of whom arrived in buses, chanted "Yes to stability, no to chaos". "There is no use in trying to destroy the country and divide it. We all must enter a dialogue to preserve the national interest," said Mohammad Saleh.
Authorities stepped up security in Sanaa ahead of the rallies. An Interior Ministry statement late on Thursday ordered security forces to "raise their security vigilance and take all measures to control any terrorist elements" who might take advantage of the protests to infiltrate Sanaa.
Saleh had earlier "demanded security services offer full protection for the demonstrators" and prevent confrontations, according a statement from Yemen's Washington embassy.