Failure and Fringe: Maeen Abdulmalik in the Spotlight

In October 2018, the then Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi appointed Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed as the new Prime Minister to replace Ahmed Obaid Bin Dagher, the current Speaker of Shura Council, who faced occupation charges. Abdulmalik’s appointment came in very tense political circumstances and poor economic and service conditions in South Yemen’s governorates and Northern areas which are not controlled by the Houthis. Abdulmalik led the pre-Riyadh Agreement government and the parity government divided between South Yemen and North Yemen. He moved between Aden, Riyadh and Cairo for two years amid political fluctuations that led to the establishment of the parity government in December 2020 in light of the Riyadh Agreement. Despite his failure as the head of the first government, there was a consensus to appoint Abdulmalik to lead the parity government.

 

Many times, the consensus enjoyed by Abdulmalik was seen as a result of the short political experience of the man who was unknown before 2013. At that time, the so-called “Yemeni National Dialogue” was launched in which he served as the head of a team tasked with the "independence of bodies and topics”. Before he was appointed PM, Abdulmalik served as the Minister of Public Works and Roads between 2015-2017.

 

Additionally, Abdulmalik has enjoyed a close relationship with the Saudi Ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed Al Jaber who has had a strong influence in many appointments and nominations within the consecutive Yemeni governments since 2015. These governments were based in Riyadh more than any other place.

 

Despite Abdulmalik’s perfection in playing on contradictions and creating balances with the main forces as part of the "legitimacy" matrix in the country, it seems that the "fringe angle" upon which he relied as a survival strategy is no longer safe today. Due to the accumulation of economic and service failures along with the political alignment he has recently shown, the voices that oppose Maeen Abdulmalik have escalated, especially from the Southern Transitional Council (STC).

 

The big failure of Maeen Abdulmalik's work and his accumulative missteps emerged after declaring the establishment of the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) in April this year. It seems that the young man who came from the squares of the so-called "Youth Revolution '' in 2011 didn't meet the massive reforms required by the phase and accompanied important changes amid attempts by today's partners under the PLC’s umbrella to maintain them.

 

Maeen Abdulmalik's record as PM is void of remarkable successes. The man who held office at a time when the US dollar was less than 800 Yemeni riyals faces today the worst service and living hood conditions across the governorates.

 

At the service level, the electricity of Aden is one of the most prominent examples of Maeen Abdulmalik's failures. In a previous report, South24 Center's exclusive sources accused the Yemeni cabinet of the intentional neglect of the governmental electricity power stations in Aden in favor of the hired ones as part of what they described as "corruption deals and common interests".

 

The sources said that Maeen Abdulmalik hired a power station to feed Aden with an estimated capacity of only 100 megawatts with a total value that exceeds $130 million while several state governmental power stations in Aden need maintenance operations that require millions of dollars to produce more power.