Monday, April 25, 2011

Saleh, Yemen joined the dictator against him

Three months of protests just over three decades in power. Ali Abdullah Saleh (Bait Al Ahmar, Yemen, 1942), military occupation, was Yemeni president since 1978, former North Yemen since 1990, the reunified Republic of Yemen. Saleh had participated with other officers in the bloodless coup that toppled the Council of the Republic headed by Abdul Rahman Al Kadi Iryani in June 1974.

Four years later, he joined the Provisional Presidential Council was formed in June 1978 following the assassination of the president, Ahmed Hussain al Grashim. On 18 July the same year was elected president of the Yemen Arab Republic and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, a position he held until 1990.

Heir to an essentially military, soon overtook the fragile stability of the regimes that preceded it, began a cautious program of political liberalization and intensified efforts towards unification with its southern neighbors, effective May 22, 1990 . He then became head of state of the Republic of Yemen, and was ratified in a democratic opening, which in his opinion, should accompany the new process.

On April 27, 1993, Yemen held its first free legislative elections. But in May 1994, the country plunged into a bloody civil war following the attempted sovereigntist open the old South, that the late President Saleh's northern crushed in less than two months, but that caused some 8,000 deaths.

In 1997, the ruling party General People's Congress (which Saleh was secretary general from 1982) revalidated the victory in legislative elections and in September 1999, Saleh was re-elected with 96% of the vote, the first direct presidential elections in the history of Yemen, which were boycotted by the opposition.

In August 2000, the President reinforced his powers under a constitutional reform that enables him to dissolve Parliament, which adopted laws ceased to be binding and acquired the status of "recommendations." Democratic backsliding denounced by the opposition, was enacted by referendum on February 20, 2001, and the note of openness only resulted in the appointment of a woman as secretary of state, Saleh decided at a cabinet remodeling carried out two months later.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001 against the United States, the president shook his collaboration with Washington, battered after the Islamist attack a year earlier against a U.S. destroyer in Aden, the former southern capital, with the result of 17 marines dead. Hundreds of fundamentalists have been arrested since then security forces in Yemen, a country considered one of the strongholds of the international terrorist network Al Qaeda, and where attacks have continued, as October 2003, when suspected activists attacked French supertanker Limburg, while passing through the port of Aden, or as recorded in July 2007 a convoy of Spanish tourists, eight of whom were killed.

Since mid 2004, the Yemeni army clashed with Shiite rebels in the northern province of Saada. Conflict in which hundreds died and tens of thousands were forced from their homes, especially since August 2009 when he stepped up military attack. The offensive ended with a ceasefire signed by both sides in February 2010, and months later, on July 13 announced the reactivation of a pact signed between the Government and insurgents in Doha in 2007, which stipulated the end of hostilities.

In December 2010 he proceeded to release five hundred of the 1,500 imprisoned rebels. Curbing the kidnapping of Westerners, was another objective of the Yemeni president, who promised tough with kidnappers, often rebellious tribesmen using the abduction of foreigners to extract concessions from the government, but they threaten the emerging tourism industry Yemeni .

In the elections of September 2006 was re-elected for a second and final term, with 77% of the vote query that defeated opposition candidate Faisal bin Shamlan, former Oil Minister, who received 21 % of votes. On 1 January 2011 the Parliament passed interim changes that allowed Saleh to seek a third mandate, that the Constitution prohibited, but pressure from the opposition, which hit the streets this month, forcing him to testify before Parliament February 2, paralyzing the legal reform that would enable a candidate in 2013, denied he had aspirations of his son Ahmed to succeed him and agreed to postpone the parliamentary elections scheduled for April 2011.

However, the protests have happened since then and Saleh has been falling more and more alone, because of the harsh repression of the claims of the protesters. Now, Saleh has accepted the proposal of its neighbors to abandon power.

No comments:

Post a Comment