Bahah appointment aims to shore up Yemen’s government in exile

For Riyadh, which has invested its role as a regional leader in a bombing campaign aimed at restoring the government Abdrabu Mansur Hadi represents, it is growing more important to bolster his credibility as Yemen’s lawful president.

A Djibouti police officer stands on the quay as refugees arrive aboard a boat at the port of Djibouti after crossing the Gulf of Aden to flee Yemen on April 14, 2015. Refugees from war-torn Yemen descShow more

RIYADH/ADEN // By appointing the widely-respected Khaled Bahah as his deputy, Yemen’s president and his Saudi backers seek to shore up a government-in-exile whose legitimacy is central to Riyadh’s military campaign against Iran-allied Houthi rebels.

While president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi is seen as ineffectual and lacking support even in his hometown of Aden, the last city nominally under his control, Mr Bahah commands admiration across much of Yemen’s political spectrum.

“Khaled Bahah is beloved of everyone. He’s a strong man – the opposite of Hadi, whose weakness led the Houthis to take control of most of the country,” said Mohammed Hazam, a civil servant in Sanaa.

For Riyadh, which has invested its role as a regional leader in a bombing campaign aimed at restoring the government Mr Hadi represents, it is growing more important to bolster his credibility as Yemen’s lawful president.

But nearly three weeks after he fled to Saudi Arabia, Mr Hadi’s nominal legitimacy inside his country appears to be increasingly in question.

Even inside Aden, those manning the barricades do not see themselves as Hadi loyalists.

“In Aden there is no state and no army, and no authority and no president. There is no government ...They are defending their streets and their country,” said Wassim Al Sayad, 40, an Aden resident who has taken up arms against the Houthis.

The stakes are high for Saudi Arabia, which faces the prospect of greater influence from Iran if the Houthis are not neutralised.

Mr Hadi’s foreign minister Reyad Yassin Abdulla said Mr Bahah’s appointment would help bolster the government in exile, but rejected the idea that it was hard to maintain legitimacy while outside the country.

“Legitimacy is a continuous thing. It is not about one person, it is about the whole government, the whole state,” he said.

Under Yemen’s existing constitution, in the absence of a vice president the presidency would pass to the speaker of parliament, who is now in Houthi-controlled Sanaa, if anything happened to Mr Hadi.

“His appointment has opened the door to a political solution to the current crisis in Yemen,” said Ali Mohammed Yahya, a political writer in Aden.

Mr Hadi’s internationally recognised government was unpopular even before the Houthis seized control of Sanaa last year, and since his official two-year tenure ended in 2014, his legal status as president was already legally ambiguous.

He was elected, unopposed, in 2012 as an interim president to oversee a two-year shift from former president Ali Abdullah Saleh towards democracy after a 2011 uprising, but while the transition process faltered, he stayed on in power.

Saudi Arabia and its Western supporters want to resurrect that 2012 transition plan which was interrupted by the Houthi advance on Sanaa last year.

But Mr Hadi’s lack of popularity, let alone a regional, tribal or military support base, has complicated that ambition.

“There is a way out with appointing Bahah, who is really respected, even by the Houthis,” said Laurent Bonnefoy, the author of Salafism in Yemen.

* Reuters