Sana’a: Yemeni Prime Minister Khalid Bahah on Wednesday suggested his government could resign, expressing exasperation after Al Houthi rebels who control the capital Sana’a raided state institutions and sacked public officials.
The rebels, who became the de facto power in Yemen when they captured Sana’a in September, portray their movement as a revolution against corruption and embezzlement which is emptying state coffers.
On Wednesday, they evicted a state oil company director and his deputy from their offices and stopped the manager of one of the main sea ports, tightening the group’s grip on state institutions.
State news agency Saba reported Bahah as telling his weekly cabinet meeting that the government was ready to “withdraw if the other party was willing to shoulder the responsibility,” apparently referring to Al Houthis.
Bahah said he would not countenance bloodshed and could not tolerate “any project other than the constitutional and judicial project to administer the state,” Saba reported.
Western powers are worried about the volatile situation in Yemen, which shares a long border with oil giant Saudi Arabia and is fighting Al Qaida militants and separatists rebels.
Westerns diplomats and Yemeni officials say Al Houthis are getting support from former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was came under UN Security Council sanctions last month for threatening Yemen’s peace and stability, something he denies.
Speaking about the rebels’ raids on the port and the oil company, Sultan Al Atwani, an adviser to President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, said: “It is clear that Al Houthis, together with Ali Abdullah Saleh, are completing their (September) 21 coup.”
Al Houthi leader Abdul Malek Al Houthi on Tuesday accused Hadi of allowing corruption and demanded he hand control of the state bodies to Al Houthis so they could ensure “funds are not wasted”.
Armed Al Houthis on Wednesday prevented the director of Hodeida port, Yemen’s main Red Sea harbour where most of the country’s food imports arrive, reaching his office with a view to replacing him, port officials said.
“The staff were so angry they walked out in a demonstration and closed off the port,” one official said by telephone.
Separately, about 20 Al Houthi fighters broke into the state-run Safer oil company in Sana’a, kicked out the director and his deputy and locked their offices, company officials said.
Al Houthis had already sacked four provincial governors, the editor of the main state newspaper, Al Thawra, and the commander of the special forces.
On Tuesday, Saleh loyalists held up a parliamentary meeting which was meant to confirm Bahah’s government, demanding the reopening of offices belonging to their General People’s Congress which they said had been shut by authorities in Southern Yemen.
