Trouble at the Top

The deep rift between President Ali Abdullah Salih and Vice-President Ali Salim al Bidh was made public by the latter's conspicuous absence from the national celebrations on September 26 and October 14 and the cancellation of his appointment with Sultan Qaboos during the Omani leader's visit to Sana'a last month. Al Bidh had conducted a 'stay- away' protest in southern Yemen during last year's national celebrations. At that time, the issue was lack of preparation for election scheduled for November 1992. Those elections, finally held in April this year, had been designed to end a 30-month post- unification transition period, during which power in the five-man Presidential Council and the 301- member parliament was shared between Salih's General People's Congress (GPC) and al Bidh's Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP).