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.
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