SANAA, 3 July 2006 — Yemeni opposition parties yesterday named a single candidate to challenge long-serving President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the presidential elections planned for next September.
Leaders of five main opposition parties voted at a meeting in the capital Sanaa to field independent politician Faisal Bin-Shamlan, 72, as their joint candidate for the presidential vote.
Grouped under the umbrella of the Joint Meeting Grouping, 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, a former oil minister and parliamentarian, attended the meeting and hailed efforts by the united opposition front to achieve comprehensive change in the country. This experience would be an excellent model for other parties in the Arab world to follow, he said.
Bin-Shamlan is widely respected, particularly in the southern provinces of this impoverished Arab country, for his public stands against corruption. He 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 sector. Yemen is a small oil producer, which pumps some 470,000 barrels per day.
Although a dozen of politicians have announced an intention to run for the presidential elections, Bin-Shamlan is expected to be the main rival of incumbent President Saleh in the presidential polls.
Saleh, who has been at the helm since 1978, announced last week that he would seek re-election, retracting a promise to step down he made last year.
