We won’t be excluded, Yemeni opposition

The three main Yemeni opposition parties said releasing political detainees and neutrality of the State’s institutions including the army and media will be the only way to get out from the ongoing crisis. 

They also said in a letter addressed to President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Tuesday that they would not allow any attempt to exclude them from the political equation.

The opposition’s letter comes in response to a previous letter in which President Saleh accused the opposition of attempting to nullify the coming parliamentary elections after more than one and a half years of dialogue failed in reaching an agreement on guarantees for fair elections. 

The Saleh’s party used its overwhelming majority last week in the House of Representatives and formed a new panel to administer the elections despite the refusal of the opposition parties.

“The elections are not a panel imposed by the ruling majority, but it is a fair system which respects the right of majority and minority alike,” said the letter which was signed by the chairman of the Supreme Council of Opposition Alliance, Abdul Wahab Al Ansi, who is the Secretary General of the Islamist party, Islah.

“The rules of democracy gives the majority the right to run the affairs of the country in the framework of the constitution, but it does never give it the right to control the rules of elections and tailor them to fit the ruling party,” said the letter which was published by opposition and independent media.

The opposition alliance, which includes Islamists, Socialists, and Nasserites, said in the two-page letter that the solution for the crisis is ,” Releasing all political detainees, and opinion detainees in all provinces without exception, and removing tensions  and creating national and political atmospheres based on respect of the constitutional rights.”  

The letter referred mainly to the detainees who were arrested in southern provinces over the last few months in violent protests calling for genuine reforms or secession.

And in response to President Saleh’s letter sent to opposition last week,  in which he accused  the opposition  of supporting   the Al Houthi’s  armed  rebellion in the north and secession tendency in the south, the letter said,” We,  from the first moment of the war,  declared that any internal problem can not  be solved by war, but through dialogue.”  

Addressing the protests in the south, the letter said, marginalizing, oppression, monopoly of power and wealth, absence of peaceful transfer of power, and confiscating of lands from their original owners, sacking people from public employments, imposing coercive retirements on civil and military servants, and rampant corruption, were adequate reasons behind those peaceful protests.

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