YEMEN: Doubts Arise Over Voter Lists

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nabil Sultan

SANA'A, May 31 2006 (IPS) - Doubts have been raised over the voter lists being prepared ahead of elections due September.

The Supreme Commission for Elections and Referendum (SCER) responsible for conducting the elections has completed the pre-voting registration process. But opposition parties and many foreign observers say it cannot guarantee free and fair presidential elections.

Before starting the registration process the SCER called on the ruling General Peoples Congress (GPC) and the opposition parties including the Islamic Islah party, Yemeni Socialist party, Nasserite Union Party, the Public Forces Union party and al-Haq party to join sub-committees in proportion to their strength in parliament or the percentage of votes they won in the last election in 2003.

The GPC has 205 of the 301 seats in parliament.

The ruling party rejected opposition party demands for equal representation for all parties. The election commission proposed neutrality through using unemployed persons to handle registration.

This was finally done, in the face of objections from the opposition coalition, the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP). “The SCER refusal to consider opposition suggestions reveals a dictatorial practice of power and unmasks the cover it hides behind in order to attract the support of donor organisations and countries,” said JMP spokesman Mohammad Qahtan.

The JMP said inexperienced job seekers would not be able to withstand political interference in the registration process. It said the election commission had replaced members of many registration committees with GPC employees.

“We have received complaints from persons excluded from electoral committees,” JMP leader Ali al-Sarari told IPS. “Recruiting job seekers enabled the ruling party to play with registrations. They used indirect pressure on job seekers to register ineligible children and security personnel.”

The elections support programme of the United Nations Development Programme office in Sana’a issued a report welcoming use of job seekers, but condemning interventions by security personnel in many constituencies.

Security personnel raided constituency registration offices to get their names registered even if they did not live in that area, the UN report said. One consequence of this was the denial of voting rights to local people.

“It is clear that the sudden rush of security personnel to register their names in constituencies they do not belong to has been apparently deliberate,” the report said.

The report also said that the registration process had proved the most expensive in the world.

The National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Foundation for Elections Support (IFES), both institutions based in Washington in the United States, sent a joint message to the SCER asking it to look into complaints raised by the opposition.

“The opposition parties raised some complaints to us over violations in the registering process. We do not know why parties do not raise their complaints to SCER, but we urge you to investigate into violations and let us know the results,” the message read.

SCER chairman Khalid al-Sharif at first accused opposition parties of making false accusations against the SCER and its subcommittees. But the commission later admitted that ineligible children were registered, and many names were repeated in voters lists..

SCER spokesman Abdu al-Janadi said security personnel had behaved “individually”, and that they need more training. But many, he said, wanted to register in new constituencies because they frequently moved from one place to another.

“It is good to find security personnel this time changing their constituencies instead of repeating their names in different constituencies like what happened in previous elections,” he said.

Chairman of the SCER technical affairs unit Mohammad Abdullah al-Sayani told IPS that 53,000 children were registered by many subcommittees. “Unfortunately, many subcommittees in Shabwa, Marib, Hajja and Amran have not maintained registration standards and elections law,” said al-Sayani.

Al-Janadi said some committees reported they were forced by some tribesmen and partisan figures to register children.