21.02.2012
Yemeni voters head for the polls Tuesday, ending President Ali Abdullah Saleh's 33-year rule and thus making Yemen
The referendum-like poll, in which Saleh's deputy Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi is standing as the sole consensus candidate, is being boycotted by two major opposition groups; the separatist Southern Movement and the northern Shiite rebels.
But the main proponents of the uprising that began in January 2011 have asked Yemenis to throw their support behind Hadi, whose posters have been plastered across buildings and throughout the streets of the capital Sanaa.
Hardline factions of the Southern Movement have gone as far as calling for preventing the election from taking place at all, and making Tuesday a day of "civil disobedience" to disrupt voting.
Attacks on polling stations and clashes between troops and anti-election protesters in the south have raised fears that polling day could be marred by violence.
Such fears have prompted authorities to deploy 103,000 soldiers to guard polling stations, said Mohammed Yahya, chairman of the Electoral Commission.
The referendum-like poll, in which Saleh's deputy Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi is standing as the sole consensus candidate, is being boycotted by two major opposition groups; the separatist Southern Movement and the northern Shiite rebels.
But the main proponents of the uprising that began in January 2011 have asked Yemenis to throw their support behind Hadi, whose posters have been plastered across buildings and throughout the streets of the capital Sanaa.
Hardline factions of the Southern Movement have gone as far as calling for preventing the election from taking place at all, and making Tuesday a day of "civil disobedience" to disrupt voting.
Attacks on polling stations and clashes between troops and anti-election protesters in the south have raised fears that polling day could be marred by violence.
Such fears have prompted authorities to deploy 103,000 soldiers to guard polling stations, said Mohammed Yahya, chairman of the Electoral Commission.
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