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Further Reading

Government

Yemen is a republic with a bicameral legislature. Under the constitution, an elected president, an elected 301-seat House of Representatives, and an appointed 111-member Shura Council share power. The president is head of state, and the prime minister is head of government. The constitution provides that the president be elected by popular vote from at least two candidates endorsed by Parliament; the prime minister is appointed by the president. The presidential term of office is 7 years, and the parliamentary term of elected office is 6 years. Suffrage is universal over 18.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh was re-elected to a second term in 2006; the next presidential elections are scheduled for 2013. In the April 2003 parliamentary elections, the General People's Congress (GPC) maintained an absolute majority. International observers judged elections to be generally free and fair, and there was a marked decrease from previous years in election-related violence; however, there were some problems with underage voting, confiscation of ballot boxes, voter intimidation, and election-related violence. The next parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2009. In the September 2006 local council elections, the GPC won a majority of seats on local and provincial councils. International observers judged the elections to be generally open and competitive, with another marked decrease in election-related violence.

The ruling General People's Congress (GPC) and the Islah opposition party both drew on Islam as a basis for law in their platforms. The ruling GPC did not exclude members of any religion from its membership. Islah required that a member must be "committed" to Islamic teachings. There were other minor political parties that were said to be Islamic in nature, although it was not clear if they restricted their membership to Muslims.

The constitution calls for an independent judiciary. The former northern and southern legal codes have been unified. The legal system includes separate commercial courts and a Supreme Court based in Sanaa. Fundamental judicial reform is important if Yemen hopes to reduce corruption and improve the country's investment climate. Increased transparency, integrity and accountability in the judiciary will increase local and international investment in the private sector and thus contribute to the economic growth Yemen so desperately needs. Police are widely viewed by Yemenis as among the most corrupt state agencies in Yemen. Historically, the lack of judicial independence from the executive branch is the key factor limiting the judiciary's ability to rein in major corruption. The anticorruption assessment team found that the sentiment toward reform is now more widely shared beyond a certain strata of high-ranking judges who were relatively isolated and lacked the power to push for change. The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), as recently reconfigured under new leadership and no longer presided over by President Saleh, appears supportive of more far-reaching change.

Parliament has considerable potential but a long way to go in exercising its general transparency and accountability roles as the legislative branch of government. Embedded in these larger roles are Parliament's more specific contributions to anticorruption in Yemen. In particular, given the efforts of some committees, oversight is perhaps the most promising function related to anticorruption. There is a tendency in much donor parliamentary-strengthening work to focus on a Parliament's budget review capacity and infrastructure. This is inspired both by the (correct) assumption that the ultimate source of corruption and approach for anticorruption is financial and by the US Congressional model, where the legislature is the source of the budget. In Yemen, however, the legislature has limited constitutional budget authority and limited political influence. Recommendations are made concerning means to reform the budgeting process, to build parliamentary capacity both as an institution and in terms of individual members of Parliament (MPs) and to undertake specified administrative reforms.

The electoral system is set up to serve the existent system of power in Yemen as it rewards local tribal shaykhs, regional notables and other parochial interests. Unqualified and often illiterate candidates get elected to Parliament from rural areas on the say-so of a minor shaykh, sent to Sana'a to obtain patronage resources. Rent-seeking behavior by parliamentarians is not unique to Yemen, but the emphasis of localism is more pronounced there. Perhaps one-third of Yemen's members of Parliament (MPs) are fully or functionally illiterate. The hyper-parochialism of Yemen's electoral system not only elects far too many MPs who are not able to fully gauge national issues and interests, but also promotes and reifies local identities at the expense of a Yemeni national identity. Yemen does have a literacy requirement for MP candidates, but it is not enforced.

The Civil Service Ministry, the ministry that manages employee affairs for most government agencies, was particularly prone to administrative corruption based on employment. A recent finding by this ministry found that up to 30,000 of its employees (out of 473,000) were 'ghost workers' who never showed up for work, or 'double dippers' who were on more than one payroll. With the assistance of the World Bank, the civil service has undertaken the Civil Service Modernization Program. Included in this project are a new management information system (MIS), biometric identifications to prevent ghost workers and double dippers, payroll reform and a program of early retirement as a cost savings measure. Recommendations are made regarding capacity building, implementation of performance-based reviews and rationalization of the evaluation and promotion systems in the civil service.

The technocratic elite is not a cohesive social force, but as a group commands the technical expertise necessary for running a state and economy in the 21st century. Individual technocrats that run afoul can easily be replaced, but the technocratic class cannot be. Thus, technocrats in Yemen may enjoy a good quality of life and partake of certain forms of state patronage as long as their political involvement remains relatively limited. The technocratic elite are entirely urban and increasingly based in Sana'a and a handful of other cities. Informal networks appear to link the technocratic elite, but not in a cohesive or systematic manner. Upper management positions in government ministries are a common destination for college educated Yemenis, particularly those educated in the West. Most of the newly appointed reform-oriented ministers come out of the technocratic elite. The technocratic elite had greater political power prior to the 1970s and the tribal takeover of the Yemeni state. The 1962 republican revolution helped empower these technocrats, and after the first civil war wound down, this elite spent most of the 1970s making significant progress in modernizing North Yemen. In the PDRY, a much smaller technocratic elite continued to play a key role in the governing structure all the way up to unification in 1990.