They have elections in Yemen? They do. Sort of. Which is to say, they have elections that are, well, only sort of democratic. Both a president and 301 members of the Assembly of Representatives are elected, the former for a seven-year term, the latter for six-year terms, but there is essentially one dominant party, the General People’s Congress, which has both the presidency and 238 seats in the Assembly. The opposition parties are largely powerless. The largest, the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, has 46 seats in the Assembly.
Yemen held its 2006 presidential election yesterday, with President Ali Abdullah Saleh running against challenger Faisal Bin Shamlan, the leader of a coalition of opposition parties called the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP). Saleh has been the president of Yemen since north-south reunification in 1990. Prior to that he was the president of North Yemen from 1978 to 1990. Prior to reunification, Shamlan was a minister in the socialist government of South Yemen.
So was there any doubt as to who would come out on top? No. According to Aljazeera, which is providing regular updates, Saleh has won about 82 percent of the vote. Shamlan is well behind at about 16 percent. That’s only, as of this posting, with about four percent of all ballot boxes counted, but there likely won’t be much change as the counting proceeds. The vote may be “a major test of Saleh’s commitment to democratic reform in Yemen,” but there can’t be much in the way of democracy with only one major party and a president who has been in power since 1978.
I have more, including a boatload of links, here.