Yemeni Socialist Party
예멘 사회당
The sole legal ruling party of South Yemen (the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen) and now an opposition party in Yemen. It was founded in 1978 by merging left-wing organisations of South and North Yemen around the ruling National Front. Originally Marxist–Leninist, it gradually became a social democratic party after unification in 1990.
In depth
The National Liberation Front, formed in the Aden Protectorate in 1963, waged an armed struggle against the British and took power when Britain withdrew on 30 November 1967. In the Corrective Move of 22 June 1969, the left wing led by Abdul Fattah Ismail and Salem Rubai Ali overthrew President Qahtan al-Shaabi. In 1975 the National Front joined the left-Ba'athist Popular Vanguard Party and the Marxist Popular Democratic Union Party in the Unified Political Organisation – National Front.
At the First Congress in October 1978 this organisation merged with North Yemen's Yemeni Popular Unity Party to found the Yemeni Socialist Party. Its charter named scientific socialism as its theoretical basis and set the goal of "a unified democratic Yemen with a socialist perspective". Abdul Fattah Ismail was elected general secretary, and the party won all 111 seats in the December 1978 election. In April 1980 Ismail, under pressure inside the party and with Soviet consent, resigned "for health reasons" and left for Moscow; Ali Nasir Muhammad succeeded him. Members and candidates grew from 19,198 in December 1980 to 32,786 in June 1985.
Factional conflict erupted into the South Yemen Civil War on 13 January 1986. According to the Russian-language source, guards of Ali Nasir Muhammad opened fire on his opponents at a Politburo meeting he had called, killing Ali Ahmed Nasser Antar and others, and Ismail also died in the fighting. Ali Salem al-Beidh then took over the party and Haidar Abu Bakr al-Attas became head of state. In the October 1986 election independents won 40 of the 111 seats. As Soviet aid shrank and then ended in the late 1980s, the party took part in the unification of North and South Yemen and the introduction of multi-party politics in May 1990.
In the first election of unified Yemen in 1993 the party came third with 56 of 301 seats. After al-Beidh and others proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Yemen in the south during the 1994 civil war and were defeated, the party's property was confiscated and its members were arrested and tortured. According to the Arabic-language source, assistant general secretary Jarallah Omar was assassinated on 28 December 2002. In 2002 the party joined the Joint Meeting Parties opposition alliance. After the Yemeni Civil War began, it split into an "Anti-Aggression" faction siding with the Houthis and a leadership in exile in Riyadh backing the Hadi government.