General People's Congress leader: ‘UAE seeks to cancel legitimacy in favour of coup in Sanaa, Aden’

Leader of the General People’s Congress Adel Al-Shuja revealed that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is attempting to annul legitimacy, tear Yemen apart and weaken the national army to serve the separatists in Sanaa and Aden, represented by the Houthi movement and the pro-Emirati Southern Transitional Council (STC).

Al-Shuja, an academic at Sanaa University and a leader of the General People’s Congress, stated in an article that he posted on Facebook that the UAE is seeking to eliminate legitimacy to set the right atmosphere for the coupists in the north and south.

He added: “The ordinary Yemeni citizen realised that the UAE is working to tear Yemen apart the moment he saw how the Emiratis attempted to occupy Socotra, instead of heading to Sanaa.”

Al-Shuja stressed that the UAE’s participation in the Coalition to Support Legitimacy has helped the Emirati authorities to incite many to repel the legitimacy, rather than to support and work to reform it, expanding the partnership in its framework.

He further pointed out that the UAE’s supporters are trying to attribute the attempt to assassinate Chief of Staff General Sagheer Bin Aziz by the Houthis, to his refusal to participate in fighting the coup militias in Abyan.

“The UAE wants to take over the south. Therefore, pro-UAE parties consider that any soldier or officer in the national army, who is from the north and performs his duty to maintain security and stability in the entire territory of the Republic of Yemen, is committing a crime,” expressed the party leader.

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“Some people are stupidly trying to argue that the battle in Abyan took place between southern parties and that no fighters from north participated in the fighting,” according to Al-Shuja, stressing that “the national army adheres to the legitimacy that serves the Republic of Yemen.”

He emphasised that: “Those who promote that the attempt to assassinate the chief of staff was because of his refusal to take Abyan’s side, forget that this is not the first attempt to liquidate General Sagheer Bin Aziz.”

Al-Shuja conveyed that Bin Aziz was targeted before, as he was attacked by missiles, along with the minister of defence, pointing out that another assassination attempt targeted former Chief of Staff Major General Taher Al-Aqili, before General Bin Aziz. Al-Shuja explained that Major General Abdul-Rab Al-Shadadi, commander of the Third Military Region, was murdered even before those two failed assassination attempts, and questioned whether they were targeted because they refused to support the forces of the south.

“Those who say that Bin Aziz refused to support Abyan, are the same people who disclosed the location of the minister of defence and the chief of staff to cover up their frantic campaigns against the legitimacy that shields national unity,” according to Al-Shuja.

He stressed that the people behind those promotional campaigns aim to terrorise and confuse those who talk about a “unified Yemen”, expressing that “the divided political system allowed the UAE to interfere in Yemeni affairs and ignite civil war in the south, in order to hinder the battle to liberate Sanaa from the Houthis.”

The party leader confirmed: “The UAE is promoting in its media, and via its followers, that the battle in the south against the coupists is futile. As if the coup against legitimacy in the south is permissible, and legitimacy must hand over the south to the coupists and followers of the Emirates.”

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Al-Shuja indicated that the UAE’s attempt to weaken the national army does not negate the fact that there are already many conflicted loyalties within the military institution, which created deep and unprecedented rifts within its ranks. These ruptures have produced many repercussions and dangers that still exist to date, Al-Shuja interprets.

He was surprised that although the leaders of the Ministry of Defence were targeted more than once, in the same way, the ministry is still reluctant to recognise the existence of a security breach that must be addressed.

Al-Shuja concluded his article by emphasising that Marib has become the stage for the exchange of what he called “bloody intelligence messages through assassinations”, while calling on the Ministry of Defence to be alert to that.

He demanded that the Yemeni Ministry of Defence issue an official statement confirming that the clashes in Aden and Sanaa are the same, as the two battles serve a coup attempt, concluding that: “Aden is a part of the Republic of Yemen, just like Sanaa, so the followers of the UAE and Iran should stop attempting to determine the national army’s tasks or dictate where it can carry out operations.”