Almotamar.net - The Political Advisor to the President of the Republic, the deputy leader of the General People's Congress (GPC) Dr Abdulkarim al-Eryany said the upcoming parliamentary elections in Yemen scheduled in April 2009 would be a criterion of consciousness of all political forces working in Yemen.
Dr al-Eryany also expressed his confidence that the Yemeni elector awareness whom he considered as more conscious than the political parties and organisations. But he held the political parties the responsibility for making the elections a process of honest democratic competition.

Dr al-Eryany also considered that responsibility as being defined by the participation in the democratic arena describing withdrawers from democracy as withdrawers from the homeland, he who withdraws from the parliamentary elections and those of the shoura council in the future is withdrawing from the national arena. He affirmed that democracy is not just elections but rather election and practice.

At a Ramadan evening held in the capital on Wednesday al-Eryany said expansion of the local authority and moving it to the system of local rule is a positive and basic step for the expansion of democracy and enhancement of people's participation in the decision-making.