Yemen: Many Nominees Filed for Governors' Elections, Including Women

The governors’ elections nominees’ applications reached so far nearly 200, including six women.

Teams of the civil societies undertook observation, as the Administration Ministry’s observation committee issued more than 42 cards to members of these societies in pursuance to transparency of the elections. The observing committees in the governorates received nearly 200 applications; six of them were women. Three of these women were from Taiz, two from Aden and one from Ibb.

Al-Akbari announced that Sana’a is still leading in number of nominee numbers with 24 applications, while Hadramout and al-Mahara recorded the least amount of applications. Omar al-Akbari, the technical election committee head, said that the committee for receiving nomination applications has successfully accomplished their tasks in all the observation centers at the governorate’s capitals. Al-Akbari said that the applications were closely examined before the declaration of the officially accepted nominees on Friday, adding that the challenging procedures will start on the same day and continues up to May 11, according to the program.

Al-Akbari said that there are 40 polling boxes’ supporting observation committees at all the governorates. A group of them were trained and left to their posts. The remaining groups will also be trained to join their polling stations on May 15 in order to work with the observation committees, receive the documents, and check the final preparations for the elections which will be due on May 17. Al-Akbari said that seven governorates, whose local council members’ number are 200 will have one polling box, however nine other governorates whose electing members range from 200 to 300 will have two polling boxes each.

The other remaining five governorates, whose electing force facilities are 400 to 600 members will have 3 polling boxes. In a related issue, Akram al-Sheik, the Local Administration Assistant Deputy Minister, announced that 42 cards were issued until Wednesday to the civil societies members who will participate in the elections observation. He pointed out that the number of the organizations that will participate in the observation are 72 with the cards to be issued to their members still going on.

Al-Sheikh said that some international organizations that are interested in election observation and democracy development expressed their desire to join observing the elections in order to confirm the ministry’s transparency at conducting the different stages of the first governor’s elections’ procedures.

By Abdul-Aziz Oudah, Yemen Observer