(Image source: Arabia Today)
BY BLAKE HANSON
After nine months of mass protests, Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh has finally said said he plans to step down. CBC News reports...
“Yemen’s embattled president Ali Abdullah Saleh has vowed in an address on state television to leave power ‘in the coming days.’ ‘I reject power and I will continue to reject it,’ he said in the speech Saturday to citizens of the Middle Eastern nation, which has been largely paralysed by nearly nine months of mass protests against his 33-year rule.”
Not long after, Saleh’s aides qualified his statements -- saying some of what the Yemeni president said was a mistake. CNN explains...
“Following the remarks, senior Saleh officials said the president did not intend to say that he will be leaving within days, and added that he would step down only if a transition plan is approved. That plan was hammered out by the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional bloc of Gulf Arab nations.”
Saying he’ll step down is nothing new for Saleh. The Blog American Thinker says he’s made this claim before.
“There is plenty of history to suggest that Yemen's two faced president Ali Abdullah Saleh is going to pull another Bullwinkle on the Yemeni people and reneg on his promise to step down soon. Like Bullwinkle who kept trying to pull a rabbit out of a top hat but kept failing, Salah has 3 times in the past year said he will step down only to go back on that promise at the 11th hour.”
Newly-named Yemeni Noble Peace Prize winner Tawakkul Karman is also chiming in on Saleh’s statements. The Global Post quotes Karman as saying...
"We don't believe this man and if he wants to step down, okay, that belongs to him... He has to hand over the power; he has to give the power that he has stolen to the revolution people, the revolution rule. We don't believe him... We are continuing our peaceful revolution."
Transcript by Newsy
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