"Yemen has new leader but lots of old problems" by Laura Kasinof | New York Times, February 26, 2012
SANA, Yemen - Yemen’s first new president in more than three decades was sworn in yesterday, taking over a country with a broken economy, crumbling infrastructure, violent separatist movements, an active Al Qaeda franchise, and Islamist militants in control of large swaths of territory.
After a year of antigovernment protests and rising insecurity in a country the United States sees as a critical ally in the fight against Al Qaeda, Yemenis were hopeful that the new government led by Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi, the former vice president, represented a fresh start.
But as if to underscore the problems Hadi faces, hours after he took the oath of office in Parliament and promised to continue the war on Al Qaeda, militants responded with a double car bombing in the southeastern port city of Mukalla, killing at least 20 government soldiers.
The swearing-in ceremony, in a room packed with Parliament members, foreign diplomats, and journalists, was strikingly cheerful. Members of the former ruling party and the opposition, who fought bitterly over the past year, greeted one another with smiles, handshakes, and kisses on the cheek.
When Hadi entered, the room burst into applause....
He called the fight against Al Qaeda, which is a top priority for the United States, “a national and religious duty.’’
Hadi, 65, who was chosen as a consensus candidate by the former ruling party and the opposition, was confirmed in a one-candidate election on Tuesday. The election was part of a US-backed agreement to remove President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the autocrat who ruled Yemen for 33 years, from office.
That's democracy?
Despite the lack of choice, the election drew a large turnout, said by the government to be 65 percent, suggesting that after more than a year of protests in which hundreds were killed, Yemenis were eager to embrace change....
Is that what they are getting?
--more--"
Related:
Polling stations beset before Yemenis vote
Yemenis vote to replace President Saleh
The Saleh Shuffle
Globe must have lost track of him because I never saw a word that he was in Boston.
Also see: Officials: Yemen's outgoing leader leaves US
Yemen's Saleh in Ethiopia, foreign ministry says
Yemeni president returns after medical treatment
