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Elections in Yemen take place within the framework of a presidential system, with both the President and House of Representatives elected by the public. Due to political instability, elections have not been held regularly since the early 2000s.
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Elections in Yemen take place within the framework of a presidential system, with both the President and House of Representatives elected by the public. Due to political instability, elections have not been held regularly since the early 2000s.
Following the North Yemen Civil War and the establishment of the Yemen Arab Republic, a new constitution came into force in 1970 and the first parliamentary elections were held in 1971. [1] However, as political parties were banned, all candidates ran as independents. Political instability meant that the next elections did not take place until 1988. The 1988 elections were also held on a non-party basis, although around 30 candidates sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood were elected. [2]
During the British colonial era, elections were held for a Legislative Council in the Colony of Aden. The first took place in 1955, although only four of the 18 seats were suffrage was restricted. [3] The next elections in 1959 saw 12 of the 23 seats elected, although continued restrictions on suffrage led to only 21,500 people being registered to vote from a population of 180,000. [3] The final elections of the British era were held in 1964, having been postponed from 1962.
After independence and the establishment of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen in 1967, the first parliamentary elections took place in 1978, by which time the country was a one-party state. The Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) won all 111 seats. The next elections were scheduled for 1983, but postponed until 1986. The YSP remained the sole legal party, but independents were allowed to run, winning 40 of the 111 seats.
Following unification in 1990, a 301-seat House of Representatives was established. Parliamentary elections were held in 1993, which saw the General People's Congress (GPC) based in the north win 123 of the 301 seats, whilst al-Islah won 62 and the YSP 56. The YSP subsequently boycotted the 1997 parliamentary elections, in which the GPC won a majority of seats.
The first direct presidential elections were held in 1999. Candidates could only advance to the public vote if they received over 30 votes in the House of Representatives. With only the GPC and al-Islah holding enough seats to nominate a candidate, and al-Islah backing incumbent President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the only other candidate to receive enough votes was the GPC's Najeeb Qahtan Al-Sha'abi. Saleh subsequently won the public ballot with 96.2% of the vote. The next parliamentary elections in 2003 saw the YSP return to electoral contests. However, they won only eight seats as the GPC increased their parliamentary majority, winning 226 of the 301 seats.
The 2006 presidential elections saw Saleh re-elected with 77% of the vote, defeating Faisal Bin Shamlan, the candidate of the Joint Meeting Parties, an alliance of the five main opposition parties. The parliamentary elections scheduled for 2009 were repeatedly postponed. However, following the Yemeni revolution, Saleh stood down and presidential elections were held in 2012. Saleh's Vice President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi was the only candidate to run, and was elected unopposed.
The president is elected for a seven-year term in a two-stage process, with the House of Representatives required to endorse at least two candidates, who are then put to a public vote. [4] The 301 members of the House of Representatives are elected for a six-year term in single-member constituencies using the first-past-the-post system. [5]
The voting age is 18, whilst candidates for the House of Representatives must be at least 25. [5]
Following unification in 1990, a referendum was held on a new constitution in 1991, which was approved by 98.5% of voters. Another constitutional referendum in 2001 saw 77% of voters approve changes to the constitution.
The Politics of Yemen are in an uncertain state due to the Houthi takeover in Yemen. An armed group known as the Houthis or Ansar Allah seized control of the Northern Yemeni government and announced it would dissolve parliament, as well as install a "presidential council", "transitional national council", and "supreme revolutionary council" to govern the country for an interim period. However, the deposed president, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, has declared he is still in office and is working to establish a rival government in Aden.
Ali Abdullah Saleh al-Ahmar was a Yemeni politician who served as the first President of Yemen, from Yemeni unification on 22 May 1990 to his resignation on 25 February 2012, following the Yemeni Revolution. Previously, he had served as President of the Yemen Arab Republic, or North Yemen, from July 1978 to 22 May 1990, after the assassination of President Ahmad al-Ghashmi.
The General People's Congress is a political party in Yemen. It has been the de jure ruling party of Yemen since 1993, three years after unification. The party is dominated by a nationalist line, and its official ideology is Arab nationalism, seeking Arab unity. In the course of the Yemeni Civil War, the party's founder and leader Ali Abdullah Saleh was killed, while the GPC fractured into three factions backing different sides in the conflict.
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Elections in Togo take place within the framework of a presidential system. Both the President and the National Assembly are directly elected by voters. The country is a one party dominant state with the Union for the Republic in power.
The Yemeni Socialist Party is a political party in Yemen. A successor of Yemen's National Liberation Front, it was the ruling party in South Yemen until Yemeni unification in 1990. Originally Marxist–Leninist, the party has gradually evolved into a social democratic opposition party in today's unified Yemen.
The House of Representatives is the lower house of the Parliament of Yemen. It shares the legislative power with the Shura Council, the upper house. The Assembly of Representatives has 301 members, elected for a six-year term in single-seat constituencies. It is one of the rare parliamentary chambers in the world to currently have no female representation.
Faisal Othman Bin Shamlan was a Yemeni intellectual, technocrat, political reformist and public figure. He was a Yemeni member of parliament who had held the post of Oil and Mineral Resources Minister in the post-unification government of Yemen. Prior to the reunification of Yemen in 1990, Shamlan was the Minister of Infrastructure and Oil in the socialist government of South Yemen. He was the recognized presidential candidate of the Yemeni opposition coalition, a coalition which consists of the Islamist Islah, the Yemen Socialist Party and several smaller parties, in the 2006 presidential election, but was defeated by incumbent president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Yemeni unification took place on May 22, 1990, when the area of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen was united with the Yemen Arab Republic, forming the Republic of Yemen.
Presidential elections were held in Yemen on 20 September 2006, alongside local elections. Incumbent president Ali Abdullah Saleh of the General People's Congress received 77% of the vote, defeating opposition coalition candidate Faisal Bin Shamlan.
The modern history of Yemen began with the withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire. In 1839 the British set up a protective area around the southern port of Aden and in 1918 the northern Kingdom of Yemen gained independence from the Ottoman Empire. North Yemen became a republic in 1962, but it was not until 1967 that the British Empire withdrew from what became South Yemen. In 1970, the southern government adopted a communist governmental system. The two countries were formally united as the Republic of Yemen on May 22, 1990.
Parliamentary elections were held in Yemen on 27 April 2003, having originally scheduled for 2001. The General People's Congress of President Ali Abdullah Saleh received 58% of the vote, winning 229 of the 301 seats. As of 2022, these were the last parliamentary elections in Yemen as the country descended into a civil war several years later.
Direct presidential elections were held in Yemen for the first time on 23 September 1999. Candidates had to be approved by at least 10% of the 301 members of the House of Representatives; however, in practice this meant that only two parties, the ruling General People's Congress (GPC) and Al-Islah had enough seats to nominate their candidates. However, al-Islah backed the GPC candidate, incumbent President Ali Abdullah Saleh rather than running a candidate of their own.
Sheikh Abdullah bin Husayn bin Nasser al-Ahmar was a politician and tribe leader of Yemen. He was the Speaker of the House of Representatives (Yemen) from 1993 to 2007 and also was the Sheikh of the Hashid tribal federation and the Al-Islah party.
Parliamentary elections were held in Yemen on 27 April 1997. The governing General People's Congress of President Ali Abdullah Saleh won a landslide victory, taking 187 of the 301 seats, although several opposition parties including the Yemeni Socialist Party boycotted the election alleging that the government had harassed and arrested their party workers. The main opposition party, al-Islah, attacked the government for not carrying out economic reforms and for corruption. Voter turnout was 61.0%.
The Yemeni Civil War was a civil war fought between the two Yemeni forces of the pro-union northern and the socialist separatist southern Yemeni states and their supporters. The war resulted in the defeat of the southern armed forces, the reunification of Yemen, and the flight into exile of many Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) leaders and other separatists.
Parliamentary elections have not been held in Yemen since 2003. As the term of the House of Representatives is six years and the last elections were in 2003, the next elections were originally set for 27 April 2009, but President Ali Abdullah Saleh postponed them by two years on 24 February 2009 because, Saleh claimed, of the threat of an electoral boycott by a coalition of opposition parties called the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP).
The Party of Truth is a Zaydi Islamist political party in Yemen.
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