Parliamentary elections were held in Yemen

Yemen

The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....

 on 27 April, 2003. Originally scheduled for 2001, they were won by President Ali Abdullah Saleh

Ali Abdullah Saleh

Field Marshal Ali Abdullah Saleh is the first President of the Republic of Yemen. Saleh previously served as President of the Yemen Arab Republic from 1978 until 1990, at which time he assumed the office of chairman of the Presidential Council of a post-unification Yemen. He is the...

's General People's Congress, who took 58% of the vote. As a result, the party dominated the parliament, holding 238 of the 301 seats.

The election

Nineteen parties fielded a total of 991 candidates for the 301 parliamentary seats, in addition to 405 Independent

Independent (politician)

In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do...

 candidates. Over eight million Yemeni citizens were registered to vote, with the number of registered women voters almost doubling since 1997 (3.4 million compared to 1.8 million).

Although the election was deemed to be more free and fair than in previous years, there were still concerns about the conduct of the vote. The National Democratic Institute

National Democratic Institute for International Affairs

The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs is an organization created by the United States government by way of the National Endowment for Democracy to channel grants for furthering democracy in developing nations. It was founded in 1983, shortly after the U.S. Congress created...

noted that:

The atmosphere of anxiety in the run-up to the elections caused by fears of violence, as well as heavy-handed and coercive measures on and after election day by elements of the ruling GPC in many polling stations across the country are troubling. There were credible reports of election law violations including political intimidation, underage voting, improper behavior by security forces, vote buying and obstruction by ruling party counting commissioners. ^{http://www.yemenparliament.org/}

Results

The General People's Congress initially won 230 seats, and were immediately joined by several independents. Despite the increase in the number of women voters, only one woman was elected, down from two in the 1997 elections.