Sana’a: Yemen’s political factions extended the president’s term by a year and approved a new federal system at the end of national reconciliation talks on Tuesday, a milestone in the troubled country’s transition to democracy.
Yemen has been torn by rising violence and lawlessness as the US-allied country struggles to overcome political turmoil after long-serving President Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down following months of mass protests against his rule in 2011.
The nation’s political factions gave interim President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, whose two-year term had originally been due to end with elections in February 2014, an extra year after delays in the transition to democracy.
He will oversee a shift to a federal system intended to accommodate southern separatist demands for more autonomy.
Southern separatists have been demanding to revive the state that merged with North Yemen in 1990.
The national reconciliation talks, launched in March 2013 as part of a Gulf-brokered power transfer deal, have been plagued by walkouts by politicians.
Hadi, who will head a special committee, was also tasked with the drafting of a new constitution within three months.
He was also mandated to reshuffle the cabinet and restructure the Shura Council, the consultative upper house of parliament, to give more representation to the south and to Shiite rebels in the north.
Mindful of the challenges, Hadi told delegates: “I did not take over a nation, I took over a capital where gun shots are continuous day and night, where roadblocks fill the streets. I took over an empty bank that has no wages and a divided security apparatus and army.”
“The national dialogue document [final communique] is the beginning of the road to build a new Yemen,” he said at the Movenpick Hotel on a hilltop on the outskirts of Sana’a where the sessions have been taking place.
Yemeni analyst Hatem Bamehrez said Hadi’s task was huge.
“If the dialogue took 10 months to complete, then implementation needs enough time and one year is not enough,” Bamehrez said, adding that shifting the major issues for Hadi to deal with later represented “a big danger” to the process.