By Nabil Abdul-Rab - SANA'A - Mrs. Robin Madrid, Director of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) called on Yemenis to take pride in "the best democratic experience in the region." This is not gratuitous but comes as a result of her first-hand experience of the Yemeni democracy. Of course, Mrs. Madrid does not wait for the authority's gifts nor does she have to compliment a Yemeni political group. However, what is sure is that she does know that democracy is the culmination of a historical development.
Throughout its long political history, humanity adopted systems classified by politics scientists as narrow or broad according to the participation of the ruled in choosing the ruler and decision making. Consequently did emerge dictatorial, elite and people's regimes everyone of which derived its legitimacy from factors related to money, materials, theology, or people's will. People-based systems proved are believed currently that they are the best in terms of defining the legitimacy of a ruler's power.
In this regard, experiences developed and refined techniques to measure the people's satisfaction. One of such techniques is the result of citizens' secret balloting to elect their representatives.
Yet, those who lose the trust of the public try in many countries, especially fledgling democracies, to question the results of elections and consequently the legitimacy of the ruling regime as it happened with the opposition Joint Meeting Parties in Yemen. Their newspapers are full with self-pity articles and weeping. They even have issued an indignant statement following the announcement of the final results of the presidential and local council elections. The Supreme Commission for Elections and Referendum (SCER) revealed the results showing that the General People's Congress won over three quarters of Yemeni votes in the presidential elections while one fifth of the votes went to main opposition parties. The GPC also won about 73.2% of the local council seats in 96% of districts and 78.3% of local councils in 95% of the announced provincial seats.

People's opposition:
A long self-pity statement with no definite stand as usual released by the JMP upon the announcement of the presidential and local council elections results. If the statement has something positive, it is only their will to continue persistently their democratic political struggle.
However the JMP returned to its consumed "even the field" cliché.
"The JMP decided to take part in the presidential and local council elections without any doubt about its results," the statement read. This is in contradiction to a pre-election prediction by former JMP spokesman Mohammed Qahtan who expected the JMP candidate to win 80% of votes.
The JMP statement questioned the democracy of the election process and talked about lack of equivalence and freedom conditions for the opposition as a main party to the process. The statement added that the "ground of the field upon which the election process took place was not even.
The JMP disregarded the public volition as they described a decline in democracy that prevented elections from becoming a tool in the hand of the people towards change.
The statement further claimed that the official announcement of elections results did not reflect the true proceedings of elections but expressed the aggregate violations, malpractices and election-controlling means to gear its results towards pre-defined objectives.

The testimony of observers:
On the contrary to its tearful media bubble and rhetoric, the opposition did not live up to the level of its chest-bounding. They did not file even one contest at the Supreme Court's Constitutional Department.
Regarding local council results, court of appeals received only 245 contests around the nation. Needless to say that the number of local council seats are seven thousand in districts and four hundred in provincial capitals.
Assuming that all contests were filed by the JMP, this questioning is less than 4% of the real contests in results. Thus, the JMP implicitly admits that they have a share on the board of the SCER and on the main and secondary election committees as well as a good number of the 126 thousand observers.
Additionally, the JMP had two observers in every polling center, one for Bin Shamlan and the other for the standby candidate Fathi Al-Azab.
Meanwhile, the European Union's mission described the Yemeni elections as "an advanced image of democracy that guarantees the integrity of elections."
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, Head of the EU's Mission , said that the preliminary report released by the mission on the elections shows that elections went well or very well in more than 82% of the polling centers. This is a high percentage in comparison to other countries that have elections. The EU Mission confirmed that Yemeni elections witnessed a free and genuine competition for the first time in the region, not to mention other published statements by, for example, the US Deputy Chief of Mission in Yemen Nabil Khouri who said "Yemeni elections are of the best in the Middle East ."
Robin Madrid, who has been residing in Yemen for five an a half years, branded the presidential elections as "wonderful," and the local council elections as a step forward giving Yemenis the right to boast about the "best democracy in the region."
In face of such statements and facts which the opposition usually quote when they are in their interest, the JMP should put into practice their statement-contained call on its members and parties to strengthen their relation with the people and improve their techniques in dealing with the different forces and classes