When plans were announced for yesterday's protests in Sana'a, the social media machine took up Yemen's torch and branded the country the next Egypt or Tunisia. So did some of the mainstream media.
As the fervour began to grow, Rupert Murdoch and his merry band of sensationalists at the Wall Street Journal inflated the actual 10,000 attending an earlier protest on 30 January into a 100,000-person army clamouring for revolution.
To stem the tide of revolutionary rhetoric, President Ali Abdullah Saleh pre-empted the demonstrations by announcing that he would not seek to extend his presidential term when it ends in 2013. Directly addressing the opposition's criticisms, he also promised that his son would not succeed him.
While Saleh's political aptitude is unmatched in the Arab world, his announcement the day before the protest had little to do with its complete failure.
In contrast to Egypt and Tunisia, Yemen's demonstrations are led by the political opposition bloc, the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), which has recently taken the initiative to ramp up its activism in preparation for the parliamentary elections scheduled for April.
In spite of Saleh's pledge to allow international observers to monitor the elections (as has happened in the past), the JMP has insisted on taking to the streets and demanding further concessions.
Yemen's people, while the poorest in the Arab world, are fully aware of the political games being played by both sides. They are disillusioned, and the "day of rage" lacked popular support.
The numbers of pro-government demonstrators matched those of the opposition in the streets of Sana'a on Thursday. While opposition members gave speeches to a crowd of about 10,000, the same number of pro-government demonstrators marched through the streets hoisting portraits of Saleh above their heads.
As Egypt sank further into violence, prominent Yemeni journalists and activist throughout the country pleaded for demonstrators to remain peaceful but many were doubtful. Business owners barricaded shops, and tanks guarded banks and government buildings. Many were convinced that shots would begin to ring out across Sana'a.
However, as lunchtime came around, demonstrators started filing out. As portraits of Saleh were left in the street, Yemen's "day of rage" transformed into just another Thursday – the first day of Yemen's weekend. Qat markets and popular lunch restaurants were bustling by noon. In Yemen, regime change takes a break for the weekend.
Defeated, the opposition demanded that Saleh's relatives be removed from military leadership positions and vowed to take to the streets again and again until their demands were met. In the light of Saleh's recent statements, he may be tempted to oblige them. With his promise to step down in 2013, he is now making the transition to the legacy phase of his rule.
Having already set himself up to become the first post-colonial Arab leader to willingly relinquish power, he will begin to cast himself as the magnanimous man of the people. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we now know that he is even turning a blind eye to booze smuggling, "provided it's good whisky".
Racked by a debilitating paranoia, Saleh has savaged the free press in Yemen and made censorship the order of the day. Following two assassinated and two deposed presidents when he took power in 1978, Saleh has been hard on dissent.
After Yemen's north-south war in 1994, maintaining the country's unity was the utmost priority for the political leadership. Members of Yemen's southern secessionist movement have been given no quarter and no freedom to express their dissatisfaction with the regime. Six wars with the Houthi rebels in the north of the country have come and gone, leaving thousands of victims in its wake and one of the largest internally displaced populations in the world. To preserve his political legacy, Saleh may now be more hesitant to use force against the two respective movements in the next two years. Posturing as a leader with a gentle hand will also put the his party, the General People's Congress (GPC), in a better position to retain the presidency in 2013.
If Saleh continues to placate the opposition through further political reforms, the JMP may look to 2013 to make its bid for power in Yemen. The Islah party, Yemen's Islamist political movement, has the best chance to seize the presidency if the GPC loses its hold on power. A frightening prospect, considering that one of Islah's top leaders, Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, is listed as a "globally designated terrorist" by the US treasury department. Considering that power hasn't changed hands in Yemen since 1978, the danger is real. Yemen's fate will be decided in 2013 at the polls, not in the streets, although the GPC isn't exactly unseasoned when it come to stuffing ballot boxes.
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Comments in chronological order (Total 27 comments)
4 February 2011 12:33PM
Fact: people get the leader they deserve.
4 February 2011 12:36PM
David Cameron? WTF did I do????
4 February 2011 12:36PM
This country is bonkers. They use 45% of their water to grow Qat - and Sana'a is expected to have used up all the water from its aquifer within 6 years.
it wouldn't surprise me if they elected a terrorist. It appears the poeple are too stoned to make any rational decision. Yet another Islamic counrtry that is a danger to all of us in the west.
4 February 2011 12:45PM
Wah! what did i do to deserve Cameron! whatever it was im sorry!!!!
I think demonstrations or the inability to demonstrate will have a huge effect in the polls.
4 February 2011 12:50PM
I thought the same thing about Qat when i saw the headline. Its nuts.
(Western consumption of cocaine and heroin is of course a huge danger to the developing world resulting in a huge illegal drugs industry exploiting and murdering thousands.)
I dont think the Yemenis will elect a "terrorist" though.
4 February 2011 12:57PM
cardigansinbound
best to legalize that industry then....at least then the "victims" of these drugs will mainly be their users - as in alcohol and tobacco.
4 February 2011 12:59PM
I guess stoned on qat is better than getting stoned as an adulterer....
A curse on all these mediaeval beliefs, traditions and cultures - and a special pox on the moral relativists who would wish us to partake in the slo-mo suicide that is 'multiculturalism'.
4 February 2011 1:06PM
How crass can some people get? How would you like to live in a country where the security forces torture and execute people?
I think people who smugly say 'people get the leaders they deserve' bloody well ought to get the leaders they deserve, and leave the rest of us out of it.
Best of luck to the ordinary people in Yemen, who don't mean any harm.
4 February 2011 1:06PM
Even christmas? Scrooge!
4 February 2011 1:29PM
Jeb: I'm more sceptical than you about Salih's promises. It's also worth pointing out that the Islah party has both an Islamist wing and a conservative/tribal wing (not that either is necessarily better than the other).
4 February 2011 1:29PM
Oh ... and qat is rather nice if you don't overdo it.
4 February 2011 1:38PM
A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine
4 February 2011 2:00PM
Brian: Normally, I wouldn't believe a word the man says but I do think that his concern for his legacy will influence his decision making. Also, I've been know to chew a time or two myself.
4 February 2011 2:13PM
Also, I could talk for days on the Islah party/Ahmar/Hashid connections, you're absolutely right that there is more to say there.
4 February 2011 2:29PM
Christmas - as we know it - is not mediaeval: it was invented in the 19th century by one C. Dickens.
4 February 2011 3:01PM
Demonstrating that not all the people of the ME have the stomach to fight for their freedom.
Demonstrating also the fallacy that the US was 'supporting' the Mubarak regime. The US was doing what every nation, Western or Middle Eastern does, it was looking after it's interests and for 30 years the people of Egypt did not do anything to gain their freedom. They didn't have the stomach for the fight. So the US worked with Mubarak on the necessary issue of maintaining peace and avoiding war. A perfectly legitimate endeavour.
Something in Tunisia sparked the freedom hunger of Tunisians. It then sparked the hunger of Egyptians for their freedom. It is a hunger and a spark that inspires us all. I celebrate and deeply admire the people of Tunisia and I pray that the people of Egypt have the hunger and determination and sheer blood and guts to persevere to the end game.
The Yemenese are clearly just not ready.
4 February 2011 3:35PM
The Yemeni context is complicated by the issue of the Southern Movement - the group fighting for the seccesion of former south Yemen.
It seems likely to me, from recent visits to the country, that should sufficient political turmoil be developed to force Saleh to step down now, the Southern Movement would not 'waste a good crisis' by allowing a new government to form without either (i) ensuring significant concessions towards southern autonomy or (ii) actually announcing the separation of south Yemen. This could result in another civil war.
Many people, especially northerners who rely on oil and gas money from the south, do not want this to happen and they know it is possible so the protests will not be able to generate the popular support they would need to force regime change now.
Plus everyone has to go to the qat market at noon so they could never hold out as long as the Egyptians - one of the political benefits of a permanantly drugged population.
However as Jeb and Brian point out, it is pretty nice once in a while - just give the leaves a good wash first or you will end up with mouth cancer from all the pesticides.
4 February 2011 3:48PM
You wash your Qat?
Pffft. Amateurs!
4 February 2011 4:14PM
Perhaps if the Yemenis could see more prosperity, no matter how small, coming their way they would be a little happier, after all they can see U.S. prosperity on TV every day and wonder ....why not my family, they may ask? Perhaps if their rulers weren't so determined to drain every penny out of the country to the detriment of the people they wouldn't be so jealous of the Western countries... (The wife of Tunisia’s ousted president fled the chaos-stricken country with one-and-a-half tons of gold worth more than £35million, it emerged yesterday 18th Jan 2011) (Source online news) And perhaps if the UK and US governments started to insist that overseas aid benefited the populace rather than the greedy ruling elite.... but made that fact known...they might be applauded. Propping up one dictator is obscene...failing to ensure aid goes to those who need it rather than a corrupt rulers bank account is vile in the extreme.
But,of course, as an example, Mubarak will enjoy a happy retirement in Switzo or some place while his former populace starves.......or becomes subject to extreme sharia law....and I've never seen the pyramids...shame.
4 February 2011 4:16PM
wish I had seen the pyramids, probably won't now. pity.
4 February 2011 4:38PM
swcentral
We are coming up to the 2nd anniversary of the droning of the wedding party at Granai in Afghanistan ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granai_airstrike ) I reckon we can hold our own in the danger stakes.
B
4 February 2011 5:10PM
Yemen used to be divided during the cold war into two countries. A progressive socialist country with rights for women and free education and a backwards Saudi style Islamic repbluc. Guess which one Uncle sam backed?
4 February 2011 5:50PM
Seamus Milne-Spart will be upset then
4 February 2011 9:39PM
Please don't alarm yourself or the public: the term "terrorist" in US argot simply means "person defying US wishes or US allies." All national resistance movements in the middle east are, by this definition, terrorists.
On the other hand President Saleh who cheerfully presides over the liquidation of large numbers of civilians and tells the US that it may bomb whom it pleases, though he will deny having told them so, is like his colleague General Suleiman in Egypt an "ally." And an enemy of his own people.
4 February 2011 10:25PM
Would that be the progressive socialist country where the Yemeni Socialist Party made itself the only legal political party?
4 February 2011 10:38PM
This is a point I was trying to make in one of my previous comments. It's a huge paradox but only apparently. The US has never been truly connected to modernity (in its cultural dimension). It's a highly 'utilitarian' country, quite efficient in its tedious mechanical ethos and hard, almost self-flagellating work but which prizes above all a certain brand of an old fashioned conservative pragmatism, anti-modern par excellence and which is being backed by an ubiquitous and tacky 'brutality', a strictness bordering the punitive intolerance which is immediately conspicuous to the eye of anyone who comes from Europe or elsewhere having been accustomed with more genteel ways.
Perhaps this is a sequel of the US having been founded by those puritan pilgrims who prized above all discipline to the point of being disciplinarians.
That is why Afro-Americans were kept in a quasi state of apartheid until the 1960's (a strong belief that divine order and racial hierarchy have to be respected) or why the religiously inspired prohibition of alcohol (cashing in the notion of 'sin') was socially acceptable (and still is in some counties and towns).
So it comes as no surprise that the US would empathize with the pious and traditionalist North Yemen rather than with the emancipated, more adventurous, modern Marxist Aden Republic of Yemen.
I think it is a matter of ultimate kinship, of sharing the same principles and restrictive outlook on life and society.
5 February 2011 12:08AM
Yes it would be.Still better than the hot bed of extremism that ALL of Yemen is today