SANAA – Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Thursday bowed to pressure after a month of violent protests, but his pledge to devolve power to parliament was swiftly rejected as too late by the opposition. In a major speech delivered in a gravelly voice to tens of thousands of people at a stadium in the capital Sanaa, the veteran leader of the strategic US ally promised to hold a referendum on a new constitution later this year. He also ordered his security forces to ensure the safety of anti-government protesters after weeks of unrest in which some 30 people have been killed, part of a wave of popular unrest that has rewritten the rules of Arab politics.
“I propose a new initiative to avoid sedition,” he announced in the nationally televised address, a day after fresh political violence saw police open fire on demonstrators near Sanaa University, killing one protester. He said he would hold a “referendum before the end of the year on a new constitution clearly stipulating the separation of powers” between the president and the parliament. The new charter would “install a parliamentary regime giving all executive powers to a government elected by parliament,” he added.
On the surface the announcement amounts to a political earthquake in an impoverished, deeply tribal country that is been smothered by Saleh’s suffocating political embrace for 32 years. But the autocratic leader said he expected his offer to be rejected by the opposition, which on Sunday said dialogue was at an end and vowed to step up protests after Saleh refused demands to resign this year.
Within an hour of the announcement, a spokesman for the main parliamentary opposition group rejected the promised reforms as “too late,” signalling political unrest will continue. “The president’s initiative is too late and constitutes the last breath of the political regime which protesters demand and end to,” opposition spokesman Mohammad al-Sabri told AFP.
Yemen is a crucial partner of the US in the fight against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has plotted attacks against US targets from its redoubts in the country’s unruly tribal regions. It is also battling sectarian and secessionist violence which undermine stability and development in one of the poorest countries in the region. US involvement in Yemen, including special forces advisors, has depended entirely on Saleh, who has dominated the country since coming to power in a military coup in 1978. He became president of a reunified Yemen in 1990.
