Yemeni opposition decides to boycott presidential elections

Yemeni opposition, whose candidate did not receive enough votes from the Parliament to participate in the coming presidential elections, decided to boycott these elections, due on September 23.

The decision was announced on Saturday by the opposition coordination council, calling on the Yemenis to boycott these elections.

The council stressed that these elections are "a flagrant violation and a recession from the democratic experience and embodies the authorities' monopoly of the rule and the wealth, alike."

The Yemeni opposition council added that holding the presidential elections in Yemen has become a "formal and unjustified measure after alienating the opposition's candidate," in reference to the candidate of the Yemeni Socialist Party, Ali Saleh Abbad.

The council, which includes the Socialist Party, the Nasserite Unionist Party, the Baath Party and the two Islamic parties al-Haq and the People's Forces Federation, called for a serious and responsible dialogue with the government in order to achieve comprehensive political and constitutional reforms with the objective of settling the crisis and discussing the reasons for "economic deterioration and security unrest."

Abbad has been presiding over the Socialist Party, which ruled southern Yemen from the end of the 1960s until the war of cessation in 1994.