Hadi elected as Yemen's new president

SANAA, YEMEN - Yemen's Supermen Committee for Elections and Referendum (SCER) said Friday evening that Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was elected as the country's new president with 6.6 million people voting for him.

Hadi, the sole candidate of the early election that took place on Tuesday, is to lead Yemen's transitional government in the next two years.

The turnout stood at about 65 percent, as "a total of 6,660,039 voters took part in the elections on Tuesday, out of 10,243,364 eligible registered voters in the elections," the SCER said at a press conference in Sanaa.

"A total of 6,646,718 people voted for Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, so Hadi got about 99.8 percent of votes in Tuesday's polls," the SCER added.

The electoral officials said that Hadi will be sworn in at the parliament on Saturday, while the inauguration ceremony is set for Feb. 27, when Hadi's predecessor Ali Abdullah Saleh will handed over the presidential palace to him.

The 66-year-old new president has pledged to carry out reforms during his transitional term and is set to launch a national dialogue with all political factions in Yemen after he takes office, as well as to combat resurgent al-Qaida off-shoot.

The early presidential election came as part of a negotiated settlement initiated by neighboring oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council countries with the aim of ending one-year-old massive protests against Saleh.

Tens of thousands of Yemenis staged rallies across their country on Friday to celebrate the successful presidential election held three days ago that ended Saleh's 33-year rule.

The rallies were held in the capital city of Sanaa, and other major provinces including Taiz, Aden, Hadramout, al-Bayda, Hajja and al-Hodayda under a unified slogan "the Day of People's victory. "

After the Friday prayers, the demonstrators chanted slogans applauding the initial result of the presidential poll after one- year unrest that almost pushed the impoverished Arab country into civil war.

On the same day, supporters of Saleh's General People's Congress (GPC) party also celebrated the successful polls in Sanaa and several other cities, according to the party's officials.

The SCER said Thursday evening that seven people were killed in violence in the country's southern provinces during presidential elections.

It said at a press conference held Thursday in Sanaa that five policemen and two civilians were killed and 42 policemen and 25 civilians were wounded during fierce clashes between government forces guarding polling stations and southern separatist rebels who opposed the polls.

The riots were seen in the southern provinces of Aden, Lahj, al- Dhalee and Hadramout, it added.