Election in Yemen

"LandepNews"

Election in Yemen

Yemenis went to polls on Tuesday to vote for the formal ouster of the president Ali Abdullah Saleh, in a move which is seen as highly atypical for an Arab country, and hardly a democracy exercise, since the only candidate was Vice President Abdel Rabbo Mansur al-Hadi.
Even so, the vote is considered a very important transitional moment in the history of the country that was locked in a conflict for about 10 months, causing the economy to collapse and many people to die or be wounded.
While people in the streets of Yemen said they wanted a new president, they added that it was a good thing only the vice president was on the lists for the candidates, otherwise they would have had a violent campaign.
Supporters and protesters of Ali Abdullah Saleh participated in the vote, the former because they said that the transition was commissioned by Saleh, whereas the latter said that they took it as an opportunity to formally sack the president Saleh.
Turnout appeared to be high in the capital of the country, Sanaa, as long lines could be seen outside the polling stations in schools and outside mosques.
On Monday, former president Ali Abdullah Saleh issued a statement in which he was bidding farewell to authority and said he would continue to be a citizen loyal to the homeland, the people and the nation.
He promised to continue to serve the country and its just causes. He is the only autocrat to be removed by the Arab Spring without a violent end for him. The other autocrats in the Arab world had less favorable destinies: the leader of Libya, Muammar al-Qaddafi, was killed in the streets of Sirte; the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was shown to the world in a cage and is waiting for a sentence in a trial that could take him to the death row; the Tunisian president Ben Ali is being judged in absence and is waiting for an extradition; the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad is entrenched in a desperate war with his people, and the end of his reign is yet to come.
Ali Saleh negotiated a treaty with the Gulf countries so that he may leave the country without being prosecuted by the law for the 33 years of tyrannical rule or for the dead people in the streets of the country during the Arab Spring.
Initially, Saleh rejected the proposal three times, but then he had no choice but to accept it, after he required that the European and American countries offer written guarantees that he would not be prosecuted, and that the agreement include the closest collaborators of his regime.
In spite of a protest from the people in the streets of Yemen, who demanded that Saleh be brought before justice and be held accountable for his actions, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that was drawing on the Gulf countries proposal.
Saleh agreed to leave the country after all assurances were given, and this marked the end of what may have turned into a civil war in the poorest nation in the Arab Peninsula.
People in Yemen fought against Saleh since the beginning of 2011, and the president was forced to promise he would resign next year and organize elections. He never followed through on his promise, and the people took it to streets.
When the security forces started to fire on the population, the tribal leaders took the conflict to another level, creating the setting for a civil war.
In June the president was wounded in an assassination attempt executed by the armed opposition, and he went to Saudi Arabia for treatment. He was expected to never return, but he made un unexpected comeback, prompting the people in the capital to start the protests again.

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