General People's Congress (Yemen)
국민전체회의 (예멘)
A Yemeni political organisation founded on 24 August 1982 by North Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh. It began as an umbrella organisation embracing various political currents and, after unification in 1990, was the ruling party that won practically every election and formed the government until 2011. After the 2011 revolution it split into Saleh and Hadi wings, and it fragmented further after Saleh was killed by the Houthis in 2017.
In depth
According to the Arabic source, the General People’s Congress was founded on 24 August 1982 under the leadership of Ali Abdullah Saleh. After the war between North and South Yemen and the rebellion of the National Democratic Front in the “central regions”, Saleh’s advisers proposed broadening the regime’s popular base by bringing together the political currents that threatened it, and the resulting GPC included Baathists, socialists and members of the Islamic Front until 1990. The Arabic source notes that it lacked a clear ideology or programme and that many independents and opposition figures joined it to gain influence; the English source gives Arab nationalism as its official ideology.
At unification on 22 May 1990 Yemen had two parties, the GPC in the north and the Yemeni Socialist Party in the south. In the 1993 election, the first after unification, the GPC became the largest party with 121 of 301 seats, and after the 1994 civil war drove the Socialists from power it governed in coalition with Islah (the Yemeni Congregation for Reform). It won 187 seats in the 1997 election boycotted by the Socialists; in 1999, the first direct presidential election, Saleh was elected with 96.3%; and in 2003 the party took 238 seats. In 2006 Saleh, again the GPC candidate, was re-elected with 77.2%.
During the 2011 youth revolution the GPC organised “popular committees” against the protests. Under the Gulf Cooperation Council initiative Saleh handed over power and Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, the party’s secretary-general and vice-president, became president in 2012 as the sole candidate, but Saleh kept the party chairmanship. The Saleh and Hadi wings then clashed: in November 2014 the Saleh wing removed Hadi as deputy chairman and secretary-general, and in October 2015 the party’s General Committee in Riyadh in turn named Hadi chairman and dismissed Saleh.
According to the English source, Saleh allied with the Houthis in 2015 but was killed in late 2017 in the Battle of Sanaa, together with party secretary-general Aref al-Zouka, after a failed attempt to turn on them. The party then split into a faction backing the Houthi government in Sanaa, which elected Sadeq Ameen Abu Rass as chairman; a faction siding with Hadi and the Saudi-led coalition; and a faction led de facto by Saleh’s son Ahmed Saleh.