No Final Results at the Local Level
Its nearly two weeks and still the final results aren’t certified.
YO: The General People’s Congress triumphed over the Joint Meeting Parties in local council elections, winning 80 percent of the seats at the governorate level. The GPC won 350 governorate-level seats; Independents won 40 seats; while the Islah Party earned only 36 seats.
The Yemeni Socialist Party won 16 seats and one seat went to another political party. At the district level, the GPC won 4,400 local council seats of the total 6,896 seats available, said Dr. Mohammed al-Sayyani, Head of the Technical Sector of the Supreme Commission of Elections and Referendum. The Islah Party won 720 seats; the YSP won 160; and the independents won 480.
The competition for 431 local council seats at the governorate level involved 1,634 candidates, 22 of whom were women, representing political parties and independents. Moreover, 19,027 candidates, 125 of whom were women, competed for 6,896 seats at the district level. However, the figures given here were made available late Monday by the SCER. No final result has been announced so far and all attempts to contact the commission failed.
Contrary to what happened in the 2001 local council elections, only one opposition candidate representing the YSP won a seat in the Taiz governorate, according to Newsyemen website. In 2001, the Islah party took a large number of the seats. Thirty-three women were elected in local council elections, said SCER. The election commission in Sana’a said that 5 women, all from the GPC, were elected to the governorate councils, while another 28 women were elected to the district councils. Twenty-four of the 28 women are from the GPC, while the other two ran as independent candidates, and one woman was elected from the YSP.
Thirty of the female winners are affiliated with the GPC, and one is affiliated to the Yemen Socialist Party, while two are independents. This number of female winners decreased in comparison with the first local elections, held in 2001, when 38 women won seats in the local councils. Five women won seats of the local councils of the governorates while the remaining 28 won seats at the level of the districts.
The governorate is divided into 20 districts, and the whole country is divided into 21 governorates. The female winners are based in nine different provinces of the country. Nine of them are based in Aden, four in Sana’a city, 5 in Taiz, 4 in Ibb (three district and one governorate), 3 in Abyan (two district, and one governorate), three in Hadhramout, two in Hodeidah, one in Sana’a province, one in Lahij, and one in Sada’a.
Elham Abdul Wahed, Head of SCER’s Women’s Sector, said the SCER is planning to hold a workshop to discuss the failures of women in the local elections, with the objective of finding new methods to support women in future elections. Observers attributed the weak participation of women in elections as candidates, and consequently the decline of women winners, to the lack of seriousness of the political parties in supporting women candidates.
Women candidates were exposed to pressures from society and parties, and voters (men and women) were discouraged to vote for women candidates. Fmoreurther, some religiously or socially motivated groups were actively campaigning against women candidates. The political parties that claim support of women’s participation in political life feared failure if they fielded women candidates. The Islamic party, Al-Islah, did not nominate a single female candidate because religious leaders in the country had not made a decision on whether to issue a fatwa or religious decree allowing women to participate in politics.
The election of 33 women was warmly welcomed by the government in Sana’a and by women’s groups, especially since only one woman was elected in the last administrative elections, in 2001. In Ibb governorate, Faiza al-Ba’adani won a local council seat against a prominent Islah leader, which was considered a great achievement for the Yemeni woman. The Islah leading figures lost races in all constituencies of Taiz, where the JMP complained there were a series of violations, especially in constituency number 57.
In some districts, the JMP representatives dropped out of the contest before the polling day, especially in Al-Raheda and Demnat Khadi districts, in response to violations committed by the governorates’ officials. In the controversial governorate of Taiz, three constituencies are still outstanding, where the counting is not yet complete. The results of Al-Shamyatain district and those of two others have not yet been sent to SCER. The JMP won about a third of the governorate seats in Lahij, while the results of two districts are still pending.
The opposition alliance accused the ruling party of attempting to change the results. In one district, a fraud was reported, with 350 ballots cast on behalf of emigrants and absentees. In the other district, the GPC representative refused to approve the results because his party lost the seat. The most surprising results were in the capital Sana’a and Ibb governorate. None of the JMP candidates was able to win a seat, in an odd contradiction to the last election. The situation was different in Aden and Al-Mahra governorates, where the JMP won new seats for the first time.
The Supreme Commission for Elections and Referendum (SCER) announced that the ruling party, the General People’s Congress, could win 80 per cent of seats in local councils in governorates and more than 70 percent of seats in local councils in districts.
head of the Technical Sector in the SCER, Mohammad al-Sayani, said that the final results show that the Islamic Islah party won 31 seats, 7.3%, the Yemeni Socialists Party got 12 seats and the independents took 25 seats in local councils in governorates.
In local councils in districts, he said the GPC had 4950 seats, out of 6900 seats, Islah had 784 seats, YSP got 168 seats, the Nasserite Union party got 25 seats, the Popular Forces Union party got eight seats, the National Bath party got two seats, the Arab Bath patty got one, the Al-Haq party got one seat, the Democratic Union party got one seats and the independents got 578 seats.
The challengers for local councils in governorates reached 1612 who competed for 431 seats and more than 18,000 candidates competed for local councils in districts.
In 2000, the biggest opposition party Islah could win many local seats in Taiz, which has the largest population among other governorates. But in this election, Islah lost its seats which turned to be for the GPC.
The opposition party said the results are not true and that fans of GPC did fight fiercely to change the results in its favor. They complained that 57 centers, out of 494, were canceled due to violations made by GPC candidates and leaders.
YT summary.
