President Saleh bribes Yemeni protesters again
With the advent of protests in the capital, President Saleh promised a raise for the military, somewhere around $40/month. There are an approximate 600,000 on the military payroll, and an average of ten dependents each, meaning about a quarter of Yemenis will directly or indirectly benefit from the raise, if it is in fact implemented. And promising pay raises is a tactic that has worked before in Yemen to defuse social tension.
President Saleh previously and successfully promised wage increases in order to short circuit civil unrest. In response to the 2005 fuel riots, Saleh enacted the revised Wages Strategy which purported to offset higher fuel costs with salary increases for civil servants. Designed with a multi-staged roll-out, the failure to implement the second phase of the strategy later triggered strikes, notably by the teachers union, when the “type of work” bonus over base line pay was not dispersed to those qualified. In negotiations, the teachers union demanded the salary increases should be retro-active to the date they became law. Saleh’s current promise to increase military wages is being framed by the regime, correctly, as implementation of the third phase of the 2005 Wages Strategy.
In the weeks prior to the 2006 presidential election, Saleh promised a bonus to civil servants–payable after the election. Another regular tactic in response to anti-government protests is the counter pro-regime protest. Often school children and civil servants are ordered to attend under penalty of retribution. Students who did not attend protests were prohibited from taking their finals. Arrests, arbitrary violence and suppression of the media are other characteristic tactics of the Sanna regime, deployed against Southern protesters and civilians in areas of the northern Houthi rebellion. These tactics invariably swelled the ranks of the Southern and Houthi opposition movements, and if implemented again in Sana’a will have the same effect on the new born Northern protest movement.
Yemen Post: In a move described by observers as unhelpful and aiming to avoid a revolt like the one that forced Tunisian President out of office and out of the country this month, the Cabinet approved at its weekly meeting on Tuesday to start implementing the third phase of the Pay Strategy as from next month.
It ordered the Ministries of Civil Service and Insurance and Finance to prepare the executive mechanism to start the strategy that calls for a 30 per cent rise in the wages of the state employees.
A few days ago, President Saleh announced in his speech to the annual conference of the army and security commanders a rise in the wages of the employees in the army and civil institutions within the third stage of the Pay Strategy, nearly as the above percentage.
The announcements of the President and the Cabinet came after the Syndicates and Organizations Union urged in December the government to fix the deep deficiency in the wages system.
They also followed the announcement of the Customs Authority that revealed the income tax law No 17 for 2010 has already come into effect as of January. The law will help improve the salaries of the public employees at the public and mixed sectors, the authority said.
Under the law, the income tax is cut by 50 per cent and the annual exemption will be raised to YR 10000 instead of the previous ceiling of YR 3000, it added. However, observers played down that the move will help improve the livelihoods of the employees, saying the rise can’t cover extreme poverty the state employees live in.
