Yemenis go to vote in one-candidate elections

Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi is standing alone as consensus candidate Yemeni voters headed to polls on Tuesday, ending President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year rule, to vote for the only candidate, Vice President Abdurabu Mansur Hadi who took over after Saleh stepped down last November after months of protests, according to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) initiative to end the crisis.
The elections, where Saleh’s deputy Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi is standing alone as consensus candidate, was boycotted by the separatist Southern Movement.
However, the main supporters of the uprising that began in January 2011 have asked Yemenis to support Hadi, whose posters have plastered buildings and streets' walls of the capital Sanaa.
Hardliner factions of the Southern Movement called for stopping the elections and announced that Tuesday would be a day of “civil disobedience” to disrupt the voting.
Attacks on polling stations and clashes between troops and anti-election protesters in the south have raised fears that the elections day could be marred by violence.
Such fears have prompted authorities to deploy 103,000 soldiers to guard polling stations, according to statement issued by the chairman of Supreme Commission for Elections and Referendum (SCER).
Hadi, himself a southerner, pledged on Sunday to separatists and northern rebels that he will address their concerns, saying that “dialogue and only dialogue” can solve the long-standing conflicts.
Yemen’s new president will rule for an interim two-year period, after which presidential and parliamentary elections will be held, as a condition of the Gulf-brokered transition deal signed by Saleh in November.
On Monday, a press conference was held at the media centre by SCER officials and the Minister of Interior Abdul Qader Qahtan. The minister was urged to tackle security issues, especially after the recent series of attacks on SCER’s committees in various governorates. Qahtan said that was his first press conference, as he usually release any press statement in the fear of being misinterpreted. Qahtan said that Yemen has overcome the dangers of civil war and bloodshed and is in the right path towards a better Yemen.
The minister said that Tuesday will mark the conclusion of the first phase of the GCC initiative, and he urged Yemenis to vote for the stability and security of the country.
He also said that the ministry of interior has secured the electoral process and set the necessary security arrangements to face any emergency that might arise during the elections.
European observers said that turnout in the early morning was bigger than expected.
Security around Sanaa and elsewhere was tightened on Tuesday. Around the capital, posters of Hadi have replaced Saleh's images.
"A New President for a New Yemen," read a large banner hung on a wall in Change Square, the epicentre of the anti-government movement last year.
The number of registered voters in the Supreme Committee for Elections and Referendum list is 1000, 0243. Women accounts for more than 40 per cent of them.