Yemen's long-time President Ali Abdullah Saleh caused quite a stir last July by promising to step down at the end of his term and not seek re-election. Some marveled at the precedent of an Arab president voluntarily stepping down (Ahmed al-Rubae and Abd al-Rahman al-Rashed are ones I particularly remember urging Saleh to live up to his promise, a point on which I agree with at the time). Some Yemen watchers saw reasons why Saleh really might mean it, others (like me) assumed that at some point along the way he'd change his mind because the people demanded it. The show went on for almost a year. Saleh insisted he was serious. Then his party selected him as its candidate anyway, to his obvious displeasure. And so on.
Until yesterday. The long-running question seems to have been resolved at last: Saleh will stand for president, because the people have demanded it. Really: a mass rally of his supporters, estimated at over a million people, demanded that he accept the nomination, and Saleh told the crowds that he would give in to their wishes. Gosh darn it, he just wanted to play some golf, maybe travel, finally catch up on old Star Trek episodes... but the people, the people just dragged him back in. What is an Arab dictator to do? Can he help it if the people love him so?
Some opposition journalists started to point out that he had promised not to run, and that not all the people wanted him back, but then they got beat up and dragged off to some prison whose name nobody can pronounce, so just forget about them, okay? [Note: I made up that last part, just based on years of watching Yemen's government beat up opposition journalists and haul them off to jail. Five aardvark points for the first Yemen observer who can provide evidence that the story I made up actually happened? And ten aardvark points for the pop culture observer who can identify the source for the "story I made up actually happened" part!]
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