SANAA, 25 August 2006 — Yemeni opposition’s candidate for the Sept. 20 presidential election Faisal Bin-Shamlan launched his campaign yesterday with pledges to fight corruption and improve life for ordinary people.
Bin-Shamlan, 72, who is widely seen as the first serious challenger to incumbent Ali Abdullah Saleh, arrived to the main Sanaa stadium waiving to throngs of supporters who chanted slogans showing their support to him.
“Corruption is aggravating in all parts of the state, we need to change this regime with a regime that respects the people’s rights and dignity,” Bin-Shamlan told his supporters. “This is our chance, and may be the last chance to improve our conditions for a better future,” he said.
The independent politician and former Oil Minister Bin-Shamlan is backed by the country’s five major opposition parties.
Grouped under the umbrella of the Joint Meeting Parities (JMP) coalition, the five parties include the leading Islamic-oriented Islah party and a communist party that ruled South Yemen for 12 years before the country merged with North Yemen in 1990.
Bin-Shamlan is widely respected among the public, particularly in the southern provinces of this impoverished Arab country, for his public stands against corruption. He has served as an oil and infrastructure minister in South Yemen. After the reunification, he was appointed oil minister in 1994, but he resigned one year later to protest corruption in the oil industry sector. Yemen is a small oil producer which pumps some 470,000 bpd.
Incumbent Saleh has poured scorn on the opposition parties for picking Bin-Shamlan as their candidate, saying they should choose a partisan figure to challenge him.
“Leaders of the (opposition) parties looked for an outsider (candidate) to represent them in the presidential elections, and they said he was honest and clean-handed,” Saleh said in a feisty speech last month.
