Yemen to delay legislative elections to reform electoral system

Sana'a, Yemen - Yemen's ruling General People's Congress party (GPC) and opposition parties agreed on Wednesday to postpone the legislative elections for two years to reform the electoral system, Parliament sources said. The sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa the House of Deputies, the upper chamber of the Parliament, would hold a meeting Thursday to vote on a constitutional amendment to prolong the 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 a rigged electoral process. 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 February 12, Yemen's main opposition parties warned that the ongoing preparations for holding legislative elections next 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) that was appointed by President Ali Abdullah Saleh last year was illegitimate, and called for amending the electoral law. The JMP, that 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. The nine-member SCE has been preparing since last August for holding the elections on April 27, despite threats from the opposition to boycott the vote. Opposition parties have been calling for amending the country's electoral law to curb vote-rigging and reduce the GPC's influence on the vote. Last August, the JMP and GPC agreed on the amendments to the law in force since 2001, but GPC-dominated Parliament rejected to vote 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.