Yemen's new leader: another
Sadat? By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - The swearing-in of Yemen's new
President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi on Saturday
topped headlines in the Arab world.
Millions of young people in various Arab
capitals watched with a sparkle in their eyes,
seeing that once again, regime change is doable
and it doesn't have to be via foreign occupation,
like Iraq in 2003, or through a devastating North
Atlantic Treaty Organization attack, as the case
with Libya in 2011.
In Yemen's case, it
was achieved through the will and might of Yemeni
youth, and through a political deal hammered out
by Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC). That deal, as the world
now knows only too well, has provided a new model
for the Arab Spring, a workable one despite being
neither as smooth as
Tunisia nor as violent as Libya.
The
win-win solution included granting outgoing
President Ali Abdullah Saleh a dignified exit,
immunity from persecution (along with his entire
family) and the right to live and work in Yemen,
with all the honors of a former president. The
democratic change in Yemen will soon rip through
the Arab world, empowering Arab youth who are
aspiring for democratic change in Iraq, Algeria,
Bahrain, and Syria.
Hadi now replaces his
former boss, an autocrat with strong ties to the
US, who has been around - running a corrupted
oligarchy with an iron fist - since 1978. Never in
his wildest dreams did Saleh imagine that one day
he would no longer be the president of Yemen.
That is what plagued his three friends,
Tunisian president Zein Al-Abidin Ben Ali,
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Libyan leader
Muammar al-Gaddafi.
All four of them
sincerely believed that they were going to stay in
power forever. Mubarak argued that his country was
different from Tunisia, while Gaddafi said that
Libya was different from both Egypt and Tunisia,
since his people were living in a popular
democracy.
Saleh, with little surprise,
said the same thing about Yemen. Like the
ex-president of Egypt and the late dictator of
Libya, Saleh also toyed with the idea of
bequeathing power to one of his sons, and when the
revolt erupted against him one year ago, he
resisted it forcefully, accusing the demonstrators
of being outlaws, and agents of al-Qaeda - words
ripped out of the dictionary of every single Arab
dictatorship.
He then fought a losing
battle against his own people for one year, but
eventually accepted reality and stepped down, very
unwillingly. While all of this was happening, Abd
Rabbo Mansour Hadi was in the shadow, watching
closely as Saleh's iron grip over Yemen was
rapidly slipping away.
At first glance,
the new president of Yemen doesn't seem too
different from his predecessor, having spent the
past 17 years of his life answering to the beck
and call of Ali Abdullah Saleh, in his capacity as
vice president of the republic. His critics argue
that saw the corruption and turned a blind eye to
it, or in some cases, was even party to it.
Others argue that Hadi has a thin moral
fiber, for having witnessed so much wrongdoings
and autocracy and not lifting a finger to stop it.
Like Saleh, after all, he too is a decorated army
officer who thinks that nations can be
administered like an official army. A closer,
look, however, tells a very different story.
First, in his post as vice-president Hadi had
purely ceremonial powers and commanded no real
authority.
Yemeni politics took the shape
of Ali Abdullah Saleh, and nobody else was allowed
to decide on anything substantial during the
Yemeni President's 33-year old rule. Even if he
wished to see political change happen, Abd Rabbo
Mansour Hadi could not advance democracy or defect
from Saleh's entourage, fearing for his life and
that of his family. He had no Yemeni blood on his
hands, and was not involved in the crackdown that
began in February 2011.
Born in May 1945
in a small village in southern Yemen, Hadi joined
the South Yemeni Army in 1970 and received
advanced military training in the UK, Egypt, and
the USSR, where he studied for four years. He rose
in rank steadily, becoming deputy chief-of-staff
for supply in 1983, arranging all arms deals with
the Soviet Union.
In October 1994, he was
appointed vice president to Saleh, and held the
job non-stop until replacing him as acting
president in June 2011, when the Yemeni president
went to Saudi Arabia to undergo medical treatment
after an armed attack on his compound. He was
voted officially into office on February 25, after
winning a national referendum where he stood as
the only candidate, winning 99.8% of the votes.
The figure speaks high drama, of course,
because it looks anything but democratic,
reminding Yemenis of the pathetic elections under
Saleh, where he too won the elections with nearly
all of the electoral. If we scratch beneath the
surface, however, we can see that in Hadi's case,
it doesn't mean that 99.8% of Yemen's 24 million
want him for president.
In a plebiscite,
after all, only one candidate stands for office
and usually, those who vote are supporters of this
one candidate. In this case, those who voted for
Hadi were actually voting against Ali Abdullah
Saleh, rather than for the new president. Those
who wanted Saleh to stay did not show up at the
polls, simply because Saleh was not running for
president anymore. It means that Hadi got 99.8% of
the votes cast, not all of Yemen's population.
Hours after Hadi took his oath, however, a
car bomb exploded at one of the seven presidential
palaces located in the southern town of Mukalla,
more than 480 kilometers west of the capital Sana.
The bomb, no doubt, looked and smelled like the
dirty work of al-Qaeda. Most of the dead were
soldiers in the Republican Guard.
The
message, of course, was targeted at the new
president, who vowed in his inaugural address to
continue the war against al-Qaeda "as a religious
and national duty". Al-Qaeda was reminding him -
and perhaps the world at large - that Yemen's ills
will not be cured overnight through the ousting of
Saleh. Additionally, Hadi faces a rebellion in the
north, a secessionist movement in the south, a
devastated and fractured military, and a tribal
society that in many parts of the country, remains
loyal to Saleh.
The story of Yemen's new
president reminds us of Egypt on the eve of Gamal
Abdul Nasser's death in 1970. While at the apex of
his career, Nasser appointed his loyal protege
Anwar al-Sadat as vice-president, believing that
Sadat would always carry out orders with no
questions asked.
When Nasser died in
September 1970, heavyweights in the Egyptian state
backed Sadat for president, arguing that he would
be a weak and colorless leader who they would be
able to play with at will because he lacked a
strong personality, and a power base on the
Egyptian Street. Pretty soon, however, Sadat
matured into a political genius, bringing down his
opponents, one by one, and rising to paramount
leadership traits that he matched - and in some
cases outdid - the legendary Nasser himself. In
theory, nothing prevents Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi
from writing Ali Abdullah Saleh into history, and
becoming another Anwar al-Sadat.
Sami Moubayed is a university
professor, historian, and editor-in-chief of
Forward Magazine in Syria.
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