The Secretary General of the National Dialogue Conference (NDC), which started over two months ago, announced that in total 30 people have withdrawn from the conference so far because of organizational and personal reasons.
Yaser Al-Ro’ini, deputy secretary general of the NDC, said all participating parties and groups are free to replace their NDC members, but it must be done according to procedure.
Some parties replaced their members due to political disputes.
For instance, the General People’s Congress (GPC) has replaced Mohammed Abdulla Al-Jaifi, one of the leaders in the party, with Dr. Adel Al-Shoja’ after Al-Jaifi said that “both Ali Abdulla Saleh and Ali Salem Al-Beidh are working to subvert Yemen’s unity.”
The GPC wasn’t the first to replace one of its members but also the Yemeni Unionist Congregation has excluded its NDC representative Abdulhadi Al-Azazi similarly because of political disagreements.
Some NDC members withdrew from the conference due to personal reasons.
Several days ago, the member Salah Al-Siadi withdrew from the conference and requested being replaced by a member of People’s Democratic Party.
The most important withdrawal was that of Sheikh Ahmed Bin Fareed Al-Suraima’s, deputy head of the NDC.
Before Al-Suraima’s withdrawal, Mohammed Al-Ydomi, head of the Supreme Authority of the Islah Party, stepped out of the NDC due to his dissatisfaction with the representation of revolutionary youth in the NDC.
The most withdrawals from the NDC happened within the Islamic Islah Party, starting with the prominent leader of the party Hameed Al-Ahmer and the revolutionary leader and Noble Prize laureate Tawakul Karman in protest against selecting what she said were unfair representatives of the youth, women and civil society.
Although supervisors feared the impact of these withdrawals on the overall outcome of the NDC, the conference’s presidium and General Secretariat asserted earlier that these withdrawals won’t affect the conference.
In the first session of the NDC, President Hadi announced that whoever doesn’t want to continue in the conference can leave.
by:Mohammed al-Hassani
