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Yemen Election: One Person, One Vote, One Candidate
Millions of people in Yemen turned out to vote Tuesday in an unusual presidential election. There was only one candidate and only one way to vote — yes.
That candidate, Abdrabu Mansour Hadi, was the vice president under Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled Yemen for more than three decades. Saleh finally agreed to step down and transfer power to his vice president after nearly a year of mass protests against his rule.
In the outgoing president’s dusty hometown, about an hour’s drive outside the capital, Sanaa, and inside a school that served as a polling station, several pictures of Saleh preside over the proceedings, as he has for 33 years in Yemen.
People say that they are voting for the new Yemen, the new start. But it seems as if they are doing it because it’s what Saleh wants them to do.
“I cried today as I voted,” says Raysa al-Sayani. “We loved our president. But if he says his deputy is the best man for Yemen, then he is the best man for Yemen.”
Pictured: A man casts his vote during Yemen’s presidential elections in the southern Yemeni port city of Aden on Tuesday. Only one person was on the ballot: Vice President Abdrabu Mansour Hadi. Khaled Abdullah/Reuters/Landov
