Electoral Analysis: Yemen’s Parliamentary Elections
The Democracy Reporting International (DRI), in cooperation with the Human Rights Information and Training Center (HRITC), released on Wednesday a report comprehensively assessing the electoral framework of Yemen. The report highlighted some shortcomings in the electoral system in Yemen and offered recommendations in light of the current political crisis between the ruling part and opposition. Here is an excerpt of the report:
The 2009 Elections: A Potential Step Backwards?Elections for the 301 seats in parliament as well as local elections for 21 governorate councils and the 333 district councils are scheduled for April 2009. A new electoral commission has been appointed and election preparations are already underway yet there is still no political agreement on the rules for the election.
While the last parliamentary elections in 2003 and the Presidental elections in 2006 were pluralistic, there is a risk that the main opposition JMP will boycott the 2009 parliamentary and local elections, as it did in 1997. Although ‘eleventh hour’ agreements have generally been reached in the past, and some believe the 2009 elections will be no different, pre-election tensions are running higher than normal. The conflict with the Huthi rebels in the north may ‘officially’ be over, but resentment in the south remains palpable.
Any prospect of early agreement on reforming the rules for the 2009 election was undermined by the temporary detention of many southern opposition leaders and the opposition has yet to decide whether to participate in the elections.
The JMP believes electoral reform is essential and that their participation in a flawed process would undermine their credibility as a meaningful political force. Some in the GPC seem to believe that so long as the smaller ‘National Strategic Alliance of Parties’ (NSA) can be persuaded to participate in the 2009 elections there will be a pluralistic contest of sorts. However, holding elections without the main opposition, or postponing elections beyond their due date would raise serious questions about Yemen’s political stability.
In July 2008 the President announced proposals to amend the Constitution by establishing a bicameral parliament according to which the Shura Council would become an upper house with full legislative power. 75 per cent of the Shura Council members would be indirectly elected by the two levels of local councils while 25 per cent would be appointed. If the President’s proposals are accepted by the House and at a subsequent national referendum, the House elected in April 2009 will have to share its powers with a body that is partly indirectly elected and partly appointed by the President.
The 25 per cent of Shura Council members appointed by the President, especially, give the ruling party a significant and unfair advantage in steering future legislation.
If the proposed constitutional amendments are adopted (and even if the House approves them, there will probably need to be a referendum on the issue) the next local elections become important because the new local councils
will have a role in electing the Shura Council.The Legal Framework: Still Time to Reform
While some provisions of the Election Law represent best practice, others are unclear. The following shortcomings are particularly noteworthy:
- Historically, the composition of election administration bodies in Yemen has been highly politicised. While the Election Law establishes certain ‘eligibility criteria’ for SCER members, it does not establish any selection or composition criteria. Because the SCER and election committees are in practice composed of party nominees, and there is no legal obstacle to a party nominating a majority of committee members, a party can control the SCER or lower-level committees’ decision-making.
- It is unclear whether the SCER has authority over all levels of the election administration. While • the law appears to give the SCER supervisory powers, the Supreme Court ruled that lower-level election bodies are separate entities. Previously, this has allowed some election committees to take important decisions in an improvised and possibly partisan manner.
- Legal provisions on registering independent and party candidates in parliamentary elections leave • scope for the arbitrary application of the law and the procedures for filing legal appeals against a refusal to register a candidate are also unclear. This could deny citizens effective legal remedy in the exercise of their fundamental rights. Registration procedures for independent candidates are onerous and could present a barrier to candidacy.
- Presidential nominees must gather the votes of 5 per cent of the House of Representatives (the Parliament) and the Shura Council to be approved as candidates. This may constitute an unreasonable restriction on the right to stand for election and transforms a supposedly direct election into a two-step indirect election.
- Neither the Constitution nor the Election Law sets out criteria by which MPs should select presidential candidates. Requiring support from MPs makes the candidate’s political affiliation an issue.
- The law does not provide enough detail regarding the demarcation of electoral constituencies, meaning votes across the country are unequal. Voters in Sana’a, for example, are significantly underrepresented in terms of the number of voters to seats.
- There is no provision for the prompt publishing of election results at all levels. The EU mission to the 2006 presidential elections noted that: “it was not possible to have confidence in the accuracy of the final results”.
- The law does not provide for a centralised register of voters or give the SCER the authority to correct known errors in the register. In the past the SCER has made large-scale corrections to the voter register with authorisation from the public prosecutor, but this process reportedly lacked transparency.
- While the Election Law grants candidates and parties the right to equal media access and requires a minimal level of media coverage of individual candidates, it does not require the state media to cover candidates neutrally or grant them a minimum amount of airtime. Some provisions on media coverage of elections are unclear or restrictive, for example local and provincial radio stations are prohibited from covering the campaigns of local election candidates. It is also unclear if candidates or parties can place paid advertising in the media.
- The Election Law is unclear on how election-related cases, such as a challenge to a decision of the election administration, can be filed with the courts, and which courts have jurisdiction. The election administration has no formal role in hearing complaints or resolving election disputes because the Constitution states that only the courts may judge all disputes and crimes. The right to challenge election results in court is also limited only to candidates. There is a general lack of clarity regarding the respective roles of the Supreme Court and the Parliament in ruling on challenges to the election results.
There is also concern about the challenges of holding parliamentary and local elections simultaneously, especially since the 301 parliamentary constituencies and 333 administrative districts do not coincide. Two parallel election administration structures may be needed in such case.
Key Recommendations for the Upcoming Elections
The governing and opposition parties should come to an agreement on the framework for the April 2009 elections. The opposition has little to gain from a boycott and the governing party would lose credibility if it won elections that were less competitive than the last parliamentary elections in 2003.
A final effort is needed to amend the Election Law to ensure the SCER has sufficient authority to: impose decisions on lower-level election committees, remedy known errors in the voter list, improve candidate registration procedures, relax the hurdles for independent candidates, enhance candidates’ and parties’ opportunities for campaigning in the media, and establish clear complaints and appeals mechanisms to resolve election disputes.
Detailed election results should be published promptly at all levels of the election administration, from polling stations to constituency level, with national results being published in the case of presidential elections.
