Free and fair local and presidential elections are more important to Yemen than who wins, writes Nasser Arrabyee from Sanaa On the eve of his country's presidential and local elections, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh charged that one of the bodyguards of his main rival, Faisal Bin Shamlan, was involved in planning suicide attacks on oil facilities last week. "This man who is behind the opposition candidate in this picture has links with the terrorist group arrested this week and that was planning to carry out terrorist acts in Sanaa, including on the Mövenpick Hotel," Saleh said in a press conference. According to official media, the man, now in custody, is the owner of the house where Ministry of Interior officials said police had arrested four Al-Qaeda suspects Sunday. For their part, the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) -- a coalition of opposition forces that Bin Shamlan represents -- denied the accusation. The JMP said the accused man was a volunteer in Bin Shamlan's campaign but was sacked immediately after being discovered as a security agent. Security, they said, is a national issue, not one for competition or political wrangles between the ruling party and the opposition. "At the beginning of the campaign we opened the door for volunteers from the youth to join our candidate, Bin Shamlan. A number of young people came to us including the man in question," said Mohamed Qahtan, chairman of Executive Board of the JMP at a press conference that followed the president's announcement Tuesday. According to state-run newspapers, the man in question, who allegedly went by a number of names and carried several identification cards and passports, was chosen by Islah Party -- the core party of the JMP coalition -- to accompany Bin Shamlan on his campaign. He used to chant slogans and cheer for Bin Shamlan in election rallies. Allegedly he was also a member of a terrorist group in Afghanistan and a companion of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. Qahtan responded: "This man accompanied Bin Shamlan for eight days, then we received information from his neighbours that he is working with the security agencies. We thanked him for his voluntary work and told him we don't need his companionship anymore and that was before the bombings." The JMP accused authorities of being behind recent "kidnappings and bombings" to divert the attention away from elections on 20 September. "There are many indications that the ruling party is behind the bombings to frighten citizens from the JMP, but that goal will not be achieved because the people are aware of what is going on," said Sultan Al-Atwani, secretary-general of the Unionist Nasserite Party and a JMP leader. The chairman of the Supreme Council of the JMP also accused the government of releasing terrorists from prisons to implement terrorist acts in an obvious reference to the 23 Al-Qaeda suspects who escaped from an intelligence prison early this year. As to the future of the Yemeni presidency, the JMP say that Bin Shamlan will achieve a 70 per cent strong victory if the 20 September elections are fair while the ruling General People's Congress (GPC) holds confidently that incumbent President Saleh will take at least 80 per cent of the vote. Observers, however, downplay the question of who wins and focus more on fairness and security in a country unfamiliar to peaceful transfers of power. "In both cases, fair or unfair elections, the ruling GPC should be the winner, unfortunately, but if the GPC wins in fair elections with 51 per cent that will be a big victory for opposition," one observer, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Vote fraud or forgery may take place either to raise the percentage of the ruling party to more than 80 per cent, to abolish the victory of the opposition," he said "Or both sides may agree on forgery if the opposition wins 51 per cent; in this case both of them may agree on making the result in favour of the ruling party." About nine million Yemenis were slated to vote yesterday to choose a president and local council representatives. Five men, including President Saleh, are competing for the country's top post. Some 20,000 candidates, with the GPC fielding the lion's share, are vying for 7,000 seats in local elections that will be held simultaneously with presidential elections. Around 100,000 persons, 54 per cent of them GPC affiliates and 46 per cent linked to the JMP, were due to administer the one-day elections. The final result ought to be declared within 72 hours of the close of the polls. Funded by international organisations, the cost of the whole process, from vote registration to the declaration of the final results, is estimated at $50 million according to Supreme Committee for Elections and Referendum (SCER) Chairman Khaled Al-Shareef. Independent polls show that Saleh is the most favoured candidate. One poll has shown that Saleh's popularity stands high in rural areas where 70 per cent of Yemen's population resides. Bin Shamlan's popularity, on the contrary, is confined to the major cities, according to the poll conducted by the Yemen Polling Centre and funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy. Observation of the elections will be concentrated in the cities; international observers cannot go to rural areas for security reasons. Despite the fact that 100,000 men will be deployed across the country's 301 constituencies, there were fears on the eve of the elections that violence might ensue. President Saleh called for a day free from tension, urging all people and political parties not to carry guns on elections day. For their part, the JMP also pleaded for secure, free, fair and transparent elections. In a statement sent to media outlets Tuesday, the JMP said violence also might happen when government officials interfere "in the procedures of balloting and vote counting and declaring the results," including the "harassment of voters, candidates or their representatives; obstructing the voters, candidates or elections' officials or taking the balloting boxes to unknown places." The JMP statement also called for avoiding any practice that may lead to "fomenting sectarian or tribal strife".
