SANAA: Yemen’s ruling General People’s Congress party (GPC) and opposition parties agreed yesterday to postpone the legislative elections for two years to reform the electoral system, Parliament sources said.
The sources told Arab News that the House of Deputies, the upper chamber of the Parliament, would hold a meeting today to vote on a constitutional amendment to prolong its tenure for two more years.
The election was originally scheduled for April 27, but the country’s main opposition parties have threatened to boycott it, saying preparations for the vote were paving the way for rigging the polls.
Opposition sources said the agreement to delay the elections was mediated by a delegation from the European Union and the US National Democratic Institute.
On Feb. 12, Yemen’s main opposition parties warned that the ongoing preparations for holding legislative elections in April would only produce a rigged vote rather than a free and fair election.
Leaders of the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) bloc said the Supreme Commission for Elections (SCE), which was appointed by President Ali Abdullah Saleh last year, was illegitimate and called for amendments to the electoral law.
The JMP, which groups the main opposition party Islah and the Yemeni Socialist Party, as well as four other smaller opposition parties, said the SCE’s members are closely linked to Saleh and his GPC party.
“This commission is illegitimate and any work it does is illegitimate,” Abdulwahab Al-Anesi, secretary-general of Islah, told reporters. “We demand free and fair elections, and we will defend our rights with all available peaceful means,” he added.
The nine-member SCE has been preparing since last August for holding the elections on April 27, despite threats of an opposition boycott.
Last August, the JMP and GPC agreed on the amendments to the electoral law in force since 2001, but a GPC-dominated Parliament rejected these amendments and approved the old law.
The amendments were based on recommendations from a European Union delegation that assessed the September 2006 presidential elections and the Agreement of Principles signed by the GPC and opposition parties in June 2007.
