By Tom Finn / Sana'a Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011
Source: Time World
A rare moment of jubilation erupted in Sana'a on Nov. 23 as
Yemenis gathered around their television sets to watch their ruler, Ali
Abdullah Saleh, sign a deal transferring power to his deputy, effectively
ending his 33-year grip on power. Grainy images on state TV showed a grinning
Saleh seated next to Saudi King Abdullah in an ornate palace hall in Riyadh.
Saleh chuckled briefly as he signed four copies of the U.S.-backed proposal
which will see him retain the honorary title of President until a new head of
state is elected in February. He then joined in on an ensuing round of
applause.
"This disagreement for the last 10 months has had a big
impact on Yemen in the realms of culture, development, politics, which led to a
threat to national unity and destroyed what has been built in past years,"
he told a flock of Saudi sheiks, foreign ambassadors and tired-looking U.N.
diplomats perched on a line of gold-crested chairs. "I declare the turning
of a new page in the history of Yemen," said King Abdullah in a closing
statement after the signing ceremony. (See photos from Yemen's Change Square in
Sana'a.)
Saleh had balked at a signing on three previous occasions,
and so seeing the deed done and attested too came as a relief to many Yemenis,
exhausted and terrified after almost 10 months of bloodshed, political
deadlock, soaring food and petrol prices, daily power cuts and an imploding
economy. Fireworks and celebratory gunfire crackled overhead as hordes of
people descended on Change Square, the sprawling tented shantytown in the heart
of the capital where pro-democracy demonstrators have been camped out in their
thousands since February. Fathers hoisted wriggling toddlers onto their
shoulders as a group of grizzly-bearded tribesmen performed the bara — the traditional
dagger dance — on a makeshift wooden stage, twirling the curved blades above
their heads to cries of "Goodbye ya Ali, the tyrant has fled!"
For now all eyes are on Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi, Yemen's
66-year-old Vice President, who will assume caretaker responsibility for the
government in the interim. Despite harking from the southern province of Abyan,
al-Hadi, an ex-military commander, stuck by Saleh during the brutal 1994 civil
war (South Yemen was an independent state governed by socialists until it was
merged with the north in 1990). His loyalty earned him the title of Vice
President, which he has clung to ever since. Forced to operate in Saleh's
shadow, al-Hadi has never been a strong player on the Yemeni political scene
and many still see him as an al-zumra, one of Saleh's token men from the south:
smart, well connected but ultimately politically weak.
The last time al-Hadi was acting head of state, Saleh was
recuperating in a Saudi hospital after a booby-trap explosion ripped through
his presidential mosque in June. Western officials tried to court al-Hadi as if
he were the acting power in Yemen, but it was clear who was ruling the roost
when Ahmed Saleh, the President's temperamental son and commander of the
Republican Guard, locked the Vice President out of the presidential palace and
forced him to work from home. As long as the Saleh boys are breathing down his
neck, al-Hadi will struggle to stamp his authority on the country. (See photos
of Yemen on the brink.)
Al-Hadi's weakness, among several other factors, has tainted
the excitement over Saleh's signing the agreement with skepticism and anger.
Skepticism because the regime remains largely intact, with Saleh safely
sheltered in his palace and his sons and nephews still occupying the upper echelons
of the military and intelligence services. And anger because the deal, backed
by the U.S. and the U.N., includes an instruction to Yemeni lawmakers to grant
Saleh and his family immunity from prosecution — despite widespread corruption
allegations and hundreds of protesters shot dead in recent months by government
troops.
So far, the deal has altered little on the ground. Mass
protests have erupted in towns and cities across Yemen in response to the
signing. Cries of "The revolution continues" and "No immunity
for the murderers" now echo daily through the winding alleyways of Sana'a.
On Thursday, just a day after the agreement was signed, a mob of
Kalashnikov-wielding plainclothes government thugs, or balaatija as the
protesters call them, picked off five demonstrators with their guns from a
rooftop and maimed a further 30 as they stormed through the streets of Sana'a
calling for Saleh to be put on trial.
A date for presidential elections has been proposed for Feb.
21. If they go ahead, they will be the first elections in unified Yemen's
21-year history that don't feature Saleh as a candidate. But rather than a
triumph of democracy, the elections appear to be little more than a rubber
stamp, a mechanism for the elites to reach a political consensus. Voters will
likely only get the chance to elect one candidate — the Vice President — and
won't get the chance to exercise their vote again until parliamentary
elections, which aren't expected for another two years. Protesters have already
voiced opposition to the elections, claiming them to be a farce. They are also
threatening to burn their electoral ID cards if Saleh's family aren't removed
from positions of power.
But, with Saleh supposedly out of the picture, attention is
quickly shifting from the street to the political elite. Yemen's formal
opposition coalition, the JMP, a motley assortment of socialists, Sunni
Islamists and Baathists who for years were shut out of the political process by
Saleh's all-powerful ruling party, now find themselves entering into a
government of national unity with their old rivals. (Watch a video of Yemen's
volatile uprising.)
On Sunday, their favored candidate, a 78-year-old veteran of
South Yemen's struggle for independence from Britain, Mohammed Basindwa, was
appointed Prime Minister. In the coming days they will gain substantial
parliamentary representation as the country's ministerial offices are divvied
out between the two. But if Saleh — who declared a general amnesty on Sunday
for people who had committed "follies" during the uprising —
continues to behave like President, there is a real risk that the fragile
coalition will unravel.
The JMP's new rapport with Saleh's party is already costing
them popularity. A rift has developed between the highly organized Islamic
Islah party, which dominate the JMP, and the nonpartisan youth who first laid
their tents in Change Square back in January. The youth accuse the opposition
of hijacking their revolution and betraying them by signing the deal that
grants Saleh immunity. Speakers from the Islah party were sent diving for cover
last Thursday when a group of youth launched a coordinated attack on the main
stage in Change Square, pelting it with stones, eggs and plastic bottles,
shouting: "Our stage, our revolution, down with the opposition!"
Meanwhile, Yemenis are waiting nervously to see how Saleh's
chief rivals, Major General Ali Mohsen, an old confidant of the President who
defected in March, and the powerful al-Ahmar clan respond to the violence. For
months now, the sandbagged streets of downtown Sana'a have been the scene of
running street battles as the Republican Guard — an elite force headed by
Saleh's son Ahmed — fight with the well-armed supporters of the general and the
Ahmars, who lead the country's most powerful tribal federation. Getting Saleh
to sign may have been the easiest Yemeni problem to solve.
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