Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh

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Main article: Politics of Yemen

Yemen is a presidential republic with a bicameral legislature. Under the constitution, an elected President, an elected 301-seat Assembly of Representatives, and an appointed 111-member Shura Council share power. The President is the head of state, and the Prime Minister is the head of government.

The constitution provides that the president be elected by popular vote from at least two candidates endorsed by at least fifteen members of the Parliament. The prime minister, in turn, is appointed by the president and must be approved by two thirds of the Parliament. The presidential term of office is seven years, and the parliamentary term of elected office is six years. Suffrage is universal for people age 18 and older, but only Muslims may hold elected office.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh became the first elected President in reunified Yemen in 1999 (though he had been President of unified Yemen since 1990 and President of North Yemen since 1978). He was re-elected to office in September 2006. Saleh's victory was marked by an election that international observers judged to be "partly free", though the election was accompanied by violence, violations of press freedoms, and allegations of fraud.

Parliamentary elections were held in April 2003, and the General People's Congress (GPC) maintained an absolute majority.

The constitution calls for an independent judiciary. The former northern and southern legal codes have been unified. The legal system includes separate commercial courts and a Supreme Court based in Sana'a. Sharia is the main source of laws, with many court cases being debated according to the religious basis of law and many judges being religious scholars as well as legal authorities.

In February 2011, a number of protest rallies against the government occurred, and clashes with police and pro-government supporters. 







President Ali Abdullah Saleh

Life and career



Saleh is a Zaydi Shia Muslim, which is commonly referred to as the "Fiver" school of Shia Islam. Saleh's Zaydi "identity is one of culture and tradition rather than political allegiance," as he is a "non-Hashimi" Zaydi, or not a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, and Saleh would not have been eligible to rule under the Zaydi Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen that ruled the country until 1962.. Saleh's Shia heritage enables him to retain ties with Iran as demonstrated by Khatami's official state visit to Yemen in 2003 and Ahmedinejad's meeting with him in December 2010.

Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, after serving as a lieutenant colonel in the army. Yemen's previous president, Ibrahim al-Hamdi, had been assassinated. He was elected the secretary-general of the General People's Congress (GPC) party on 30 August 1982[citation needed] and re-elected president of the Yemen Arab Republic in 1983.

The decline of the Soviet Union severely weakened the status of South Yemen, and, in 1990 the North and South agreed to unify after years of negotiations. The South accepted Saleh as Head of State of the unified country, while Ali Salim al-Beidh served as the Vice president and a member of the Presidential Council .

A long-time ally of Saddam Hussein, in 1990 Ali Abdullah Saleh supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. After Iraq lost the Gulf War, Yemenis were deported en masse from Kuwait by the restored government. After the reunification of Yemen on 22 May 1990, the north and the South agreed to divide the Ministries in half, to have a multiple parties system and to hold a parliamentary election in three years. The election in 1993 resulted in the win of the GPC with the majority followed by an Islamic party (al-Islah), leaving the Socialist party with a communist orientation in the third place.The Socialist Party did not like this result and this caused the war in 1994.

Saleh became Yemen's first directly elected president in the 1999 presidential election, winning 91.2% of the vote. The only other candidate, Najeeb Qahtan Al-Sha'abi, was the son of Qahtan Muhammad al-Shaabi, a former President of South Yemen. Though a member of Saleh's General People's Congress (GPC) party, Qahtan ran as an independent.

After the 1999 elections the Parliament passed a law extending presidential terms from five to seven years and parliamentary terms from four to six years, and creating a 111-member, presidentially appointed council of advisors with legislative power. This move prompted Freedom House to downgrade their rating of political freedom in Yemen from 5 to 6.

Saleh announced in July 2002, during the 24th anniversary celebrations of his term in office as President of Yemen, that he would "not contest the (presidential) elections" in September 2006. He expressed hope that "all political parties – including the opposition and the General People's Congress – find young leaders to compete in the elections because we have to train ourselves in the practice of peaceful succession." However, in June 2006 Saleh changed his mind and accepted his party's nomination as the presidential candidate of the GPC, saying that when he initially decided not to contest the elections his aim was "to establish ground for a peaceful transfer of power" but that he was now bowing to the "popular pressure and appeals of the Yemeni people." Political analyst Ali Saif Hasan said he had been "sure [President Saleh] would run as a presidential candidate. His announcement in July 2005 – that he would not run – was exceptional and unusual." Mohammed al-Rubai, head of the opposition supreme council, said the president's decision "shows that the president wasn’t serious in his earlier decision. I wish he hadn’t initially announced that he would step down. There was no need for such farce."

In the 2006 presidential election, held on September 20, Saleh won with 77.2% of the vote. His main rival, Faisal bin Shamlan, received 21.8%. Saleh was sworn in for another term on September 27.

In December 2005, Saleh stated in a nationally-televised broadcast that only his personal intervention had preempted a U.S. occupation of the southern port of Aden after the 2000 USS Cole Bombing, stating "By chance, I happened to be down there. If I hadn’t been, Aden would have been occupied as there were eight U.S. warships at the entrance to the port." However, transcripts from the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee state that no other warships were in the vicinity at the time.