September 2006 brought an unprecedented development in the Middle East: The government of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh held open, contested presidential elections. Candidates were able to rally and campaign freely, each of the five candidates was given equal airtime on state-run television, and the international press and elections monitors were welcomed to Yemen to observe.
This homegrown move toward democracy represents a remarkable political experiment that, if successful, will provide the region with a model of a state that is Arab, Islamic, genuinely democratic.
Of course, the incumbent won. As the second-longest serving head of state in the Middle East, behind Libyas Muammar Gaddafi, it is not surprising Saleh was elected to serve another seven-year term. What is surprising is that, as an editorial in the Yemen Times put it following the elections; Yemen has "removed the 99 percent victor stereotype."
Saleh got 77.2 percent of the vote, while his chief rival, the oil magnate Faisal bin Shamlan, received 21.8 percent. This is in sharp contrast to Yemens previous presidential "elections" in which Saleh received 96 percent of the vote.
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This is a tremendously important in the Middle East, and George W. Bush is entirely to be credited with it.
However, we must act and act quickly to help the Yemenese continue to develop their democratic institutions, that will support and nurture their democracy.
Because of Bill Clinton's indifference, the window to do this in Russia was lost, to the consequences we see today.
Yemen, while poor, is of increasing consequence, due to its explosively growing, yet unstable population, its troublesome Islamists, its strategic naval location, and its friendship as far as it can with the US.
It could join with Turkey and Iraq as a nucleus of Arabic democracy, serving as an example of success next door to many nations who are watching the democratic experiment very, very carefully.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
