Opposition plan for President Saleh to step down tonight

By Nasser Arrabyee/02/04/2011

The Yemeni opposition parties agreed late Saturday on a plan for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to transfer the power.

The spokesman of the opposition coalition, Mohammed Qahtan said the steps of this plan will be announced in hours tonight. “And the ball would be in the Presidnet’s court,” Qahtan said with any further details.

Earlier in the day sources said, the political Yemeni crisis is expected to come to an end very soon as all conflicting parties are about to agree on a deal giving President Ali Abdullah Saleh a “safe and honored exit”.

The sources said that meetings and negotiations between Saleh and opposition with western mediators did not stop from last week.

“I’m expecting a solution today Friday or tomorrow for this crisis,” a source close to the negotiations which include American and European diplomats.
“The meetings and negations did not stop from last Saturday March 26th, 2011,” the sources added.

The President Saleh said on Friday he would sacrifice himself for Yemen, a sentence which was widely understood, he would step down.

“I would sacrifice myself for you and for the Yemeni people,” Saleh told about 2 million of his supporters who rallied in the two big squares of the capital, Tahrir and Al Sabeen and all the streets and sub-streets around them.

The state-run media estimated the people in the rally of AlSabeen Square at 4 million and those who participated in all provinces at 10 million.

Saleh’s supporters, who called their Friday the “Friday of brotherhood and Tolerance”, were chanting “Yes for security and stability, yes for constitutional legitimacy.”

The Saleh’s supporters came almost from all over the country to Sana’a.
They were chanting “The People Want Ali Abdullah Saleh, the People Want Ali Abdullah Saleh”.

At the same time hundreds of thousands were chanting “ The People Want Ali Abdullah Saleh out, The People Want Ali Abdullah Saleh out” in the other side of the corner of the city.

The opposition media estimated their supporters in Sana’a at one million and a half and their supporters who participated in the “Friday of Liberation” in about 15 provinces at 5 million people.

Saleh has not stepped down yet despite the masses of the “Friday of Liberation” which came after the “Friday of Departure” as his detractors and protesters called them.

The President Saleh was very short in his speech today Friday in front of his supporters. He said he would not answer to anyone, in an obvious reference to the opposition media who doubted about the popularity of Saleh and the numbers of the participants of last Friday who came also from everywhere outside Sana’a.

Saleh only thanked his supporters and promised to sacrifice himself for them and finished.

However, the young protesters and opposition parties wanted him to sacrifice his post only not his life.

“We do not want him to sacrifice himself for us, we want him only to sacrifice his post and go,” said the 27-year Adel Abdu Arrabyee, a member of the media committee, at the sit-in camps, the Change Square, at the gate of university.

“We , the youth of revolution, would assure President Saleh that we would not be with his political opponents, but we would be with the new Yemen, Yemen of freedom, Yemen of democracy, Yemen of the civil state.”

Observers, however, said that Saleh’s sacrifice means he would step down after finding out a safe and honored exit in the non-stop negotiations going on behind the scenes.