SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Yemenis are voting to rubber-stamp their U.S.-backed vice president as the new head of state tasked with steering the country out of a crisis that followed the year-old anti-government uprising.
The vote can hardly be called an election since Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi is the only candidate. The balloting was part of a Gulf-brokered deal under which embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
Hadi cast his ballot early on Tuesday at a polling center hastily improvised near his home in the capital Sanaa, after a bomb threat forced the authorities to shut the center where he was supposed to vote.
Hadi says the vote is the “only way out of the crisis that has ravaged the country.”
