SANAA, 23 September 2006 — Yemeni opposition parties yesterday threatened to call for public protests to reject results of the presidential elections that showed incumbent Ali Abdullah Saleh heading toward a robust lead. The Supreme Elections Commission (SEC) said late on Thursday that provisional results from around 17,000 counted ballot boxes gave President Saleh 80 percent of the votes and his main rival, the opposition’s presidential candidate Faisal Bin-Shamlan, 20 percent. Results from 10,000 ballot boxes have yet to be announced.
“We will call on our supporters to take to the streets,” said Mohammad Qahtan, a spokesman for the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) opposition coalition. “We strongly reject those results,” he added. But he insisted he was “not inciting violence” in a country which has one of the highest rates of private gun ownership in the world with an estimated three firearms for every one of its 20 million inhabitants.
“We will go into the streets stripped of all weapons, even the traditional dagger” carried by Yemeni men, he said.
Qahtan described as “laughable” partial results released by the electoral commission giving Saleh 80 percent of the vote.
Out of 4.33 million votes cast, Saleh received nearly 3.45 million, while Bin-Shamlan got nearly 885,000, Electoral Commission spokesman Abdo Al-Janadi said, citing results reported from polling stations and candidates’ representatives.
The official Saba news agency said the figures represented the results from 17,500 ballot boxes out of a total of 27,000 allocated for the election. But “these results are not definitive,” Janadi stressed. The opposition believes Bin-Shamlan has secured around 40 percent of the votes counted so far.
Qahtan told a press conference Saleh loyalists had intervened to freeze the vote counting from all voting centers that showed a lead for Bin-Shamlan. He said at least 28 opposition activists were arrested by authorities.
SEC officials said on Thursday that vote counting have been disrupted in dozens of districts across the country due to disputes between representatives of the JMP and the ruling General People’s Congress party.
— With input from agencies
