SANAA, 22 June 2006 — A meeting of Yemen’s ruling party to nominate its candidate for September’s presidential polls is to reconvene for a second day after failing to persuade President Ali Abdullah Saleh to stand again.
“This is not a political show,” Saleh said yesterday at the opening of the meeting of the General People’s Congress about his announcement nearly a year ago that he would not seek a new mandate after almost three decades in power.
The GPC meeting had been due to last just one day, but the delegates decided to reconvene after they failed at a closed session to “persuade” Saleh to seek a new term, party sources said.
“I am neither ill nor incapable of shouldering the responsibility (of public office),” Saleh said in his speech. “But I ... achieved Yemen’s reunification, the settlement of borders, and the introduction of comprehensive development. Now I want to preserve this achievement when I hand over power peacefully to the Yemeni people.”
Saleh has been at the helm since 1978, first as president of North Yemen and then as head of the unified state after the May 1990 merger of North and South.
Saleh announced last July that he would not seek a new seven-year mandate at the head of the republic, but he is nevertheless widely expected to be nominated by his party.
