Yemen's national dialogue council outlines rules for women

President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi is waiting for southern leaders to confirm participation The preparatory committee of Yemen's national dialogue conference has outlined rules enabling women to apply for the allocated seats in the dialogue conference, with the women not being allowed affiliation to a political party. Furthermore, three political parties have decided to waive nine seats from their quotas and announced a boycott of the dialogue in protest against the number of seats they have been given compared to their allies in the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) coalition group.
A leader from the JMP, told Arabstoday on the condition of anonimity that the parties Reform, Socialist and Nasserite, waived three seats each from their respective share in favour of al-Haq, the Baath, and the Union of Popular Forces, as the first three parties were keen to satisfy their partner parties in the partisan bloc which led the protests against the regime of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2001.
The Committee of the dialogue had allocated 50 seats to the Reform Party (Muslim Brotherhood), 37 seats to the Yemeni Socialist, and 30 seats for Nasserite, while allocating 15 seats for the other three parties in the formerly opposition bloc and 112 seats for the Popular Congress Party (former ruling party) and its partners.
While Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi is yet to set the time for dialogue, political observers fear that that delay will affect the political transition in the country according to the time period set by a political settlement, which expires in February 2014.
The Yemeni Socialist Party has strongly criticised the slow process of preparation for the dialogue, demanding President Hadi speeds up the proceedings and returns the military and civilian southerners to their jobs from which they were forcibly dismissed after the war of summer 1994. The party demanded an end to the "injustices suffered by south Yemen," in preparation for national dialogue.
Meanwhile, the Yemeni Ministry of Defence has formed a special committee in the southern city of Aden to receive grievances of the military southerners. Sources have told Arabstoday that the committee received about 800 grievance of the military and that President Hadi will personally take decisions to handle these grievances.
Sources say that the comprehensive national dialogue will start before next March, even though most of the political parties are yet to introduce their list of representatives in the dialogue. On the other side, members of the dialogue committee said that President Hadi told them that the date for dialogue depends on receiving the list of participants in the southern movement, but the factions of the southern movement are still refusing to participate.
Elsewhere, Saleh's party the General People's Congress (GPC) has rejected any criteria set by the preparatory committee for the dialogue, that contradicts with what has been approved in the Gulf initiative and its executive mechanisms, stressing that the criteria established by the committee aims to prevent Saleh’s participation in the dialogue. The party claims that there is no political agreement preventing Saleh from continuing as president of the party and taking part in political action.
Amid reports that Saleh intends to leave the country for medical treatment in a European country, a source close to him has told Arabstoday that his travelling will definitely be for medical reasons and not as a result of political pressure.
On Saturday, the committee approved the standards for women’s participation entitled to apply for the seats allocated to women's sector in the conference. The two main conditions where that women must not have any partisan affiliation and that they must be activists in the women's and social issues.
This week, the committee will approve the criteria and mechanisms of nominating members of the civil society institutions and youth, to participate in the national dialogue.