Bloodshed resumes in south Yemen on eve of presidential election

Yemen ushered Ali Abdullah Saleh from power after 33 years on Tuesday, voting to endorse his deputy as president, with a mission to rescue the nation from poverty, chaos and the brink of civil war.   

Vice President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the sole, consensus candidate, billed the vote as a way to move on after months of protests against Saleh's rule, but the president's sons and nephews still command key army units and security agencies.   

"Elections are the only exit route from the crisis which has buffeted Yemen for the past year," Hadi, Saleh's long-time right-hand and former army general, said after casting his vote.   

Five people were killed in violence in Yemen's south on Tuesday, where a secessionist movement is active, a reminder of the challenges Hadi will face in taming a nation where half of the population of 23 million owns a gun.   

The vote will make Saleh, now in the United States for more treatment of burns suffered in an assassination attempt last June, the fourth Arab autocrat in a year to be removed from power after revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.   

At stake is an economy left in shambles, where 42 percent live on less than $2 per day and runaway inflation is driving up food and fuel prices.   

Long queues formed early in the morning outside polling stations in the capital Sanaa amid tight security, after an explosion ripped through a voting centre in the southern port city of Aden on the eve of the vote.   

"We are now declaring the end of the Ali Abdullah Saleh era and will build a new Yemen," Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakul Karman said as she waited to cast her ballot outside a university faculty in the capital Sanaa.

Reuters