ORIGINS AND ARCHITECTS OF YEMEN'S JOINT MEETING PARTIES

Abstract

In November 2005, the secretary generals of Yemen's largest Islamist party, the Reform Gathering (al-Tajammuʿ al-Yamani li-l-Islah, hereafter Islah); of the Socialist Party (YSP) that ruled the south prior to unification; of the Popular Nasirist Unity Organization; and of a small party consisting largely of liberal Zaydi intellectuals, the Union of Popular Forces (UPF), announced the publication of “The Program of the Joint Meeting for Political and National Reform,” in a joint press conference. The conservative Zaydi Party, al-Haqq, also signed the document. In July 2006, these same five parties upped the ante of their alliance by nominating Faysal bin Shamlan, a former oil minister and independent member of parliament, to oppose President ʿAli ʿAbdullah Salih in the 2006 election. The composition of the oppositional alliance that has come to be known as the Joint Meeting Parties (Ahzab al-Liqaء al-Mushtarak [JMP]) is particularly surprising when one considers that since unification in 1990 the ruling General People's Conference (GPC) and President Salih have sought to pit the JMP's two main parties—the YSP and Islah—against each other through a process of allying with or bolstering one at the expense of the other. As recently as 1994, these two parties were literally killing each other in Yemen's war of succession.