As part of an Arab delegation from Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt, the Central Elections Commission represented in its CEO, Mr. Hisham Kuhail, participated in observing the Local and presidential Yemeni elections which were held on 20 September, 2006. The delegation met with representatives from the Yemeni Supreme Commission for Elections and Referendum as well as representatives of the participating political parties and a number of local and international observers.
The Arab delegation issued a report on this regard indicating that elections expressed the will of the Yemeni people. More than 60% of the Yemeni voters participated on elections day and five candidates competed for the presidency of the Yemeni Republic, most distinguished of whom is the Yemeni President " Ali Abdullah Saleh" , the candidate of the opposition Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) Faysal Bin Shamlan" and three other independent candidates.
The report indicated that the number of registrants reached 9.25 million voters distributed on 5600 polling centers. The percentage of registered women voters reached 42% despite the fact that no female candidates were nominated for the Presidency.
From the technical aspect, the report indicated that the electoral process was well organized despite the tensed atmosphere preceded the polling day but the mutual desire to make a success of the democratic process in Yemen prevented the use of violence and weapons which existed in different types.
The report also stated that the strong tribal influence in the Yemeni society, the high level of illiteracy and the poor economic conditions in general affected the democratic process in Yemen and resulted in explicit violations to the integrity of the electoral process. The violations included:
- The existence of security forces and weapons inside the electoral committees and the intervention in guiding voters.
- The public voting sometimes and the intervention of members of the electoral committees in order to convince voters to vote for a certain party.
- The participation of children in the polling process despite their young age especially in some of the remote areas (mountainous and rural areas).
- Refraining from abiding by the procedures in some of the polling committees.
- Conducting of campaigning activities on elections day with the wide existence of campaigning materials on the doors of the electoral committees.
- Refraining from revealing the faces of the female voters in order to verify their identities.
- The repeated existence of assistants to help female voters.
It should be indicated that President, Ali Abdullah Saleh won the Presidential elections and obtained 77.1 % of the votes