Houthi’s position on the political partnership

The Houthi ideology – based on guardianship and selection – represents the main determinant of the Houthi group’s position on partnership with the other party in general and partnership with the General People’s Congress party in particular. The Houthi group is an exclusionary group, sectarian in origin and ideology, that does not accept coexistence with others, let alone partnership. However, the circumstances of the war compelled the Houthi group to present itself within the framework of partnership with the General People’s Congress party, for reasons of uniting its internal front only, where the Houthi group utilizes its pseudo-partnership with the GPC party to market its coup internally and externally and use it as a soft power to contain Large segments of society which fall under the GPC party umbrella, in addition to employing it in international communication, like the United Nations and other international bodies.

The experience of the political partnership between the Houthi group and Saleh, which ended with his death, and then between the group and the GPC party, demonstrated the impossibility of coexistence with the group to build a pluralistic democratic political system, except out of subservience to it. Unfortunately, any political projects that try to promote political partnership with the Houthi group, rebuild the state, and share power with it, will fail due to the nature of the group as it’s an armed military entity that believes in violence as a way to reach power and refuses to transform into a political party, accept democracy and the peaceful transfer of power through elections.

And since the war imposes the continuation of the Houthi group’s partnership with the GPC party, it will remain a pseudo-partnership, and there are no indications that the GPC party will be able to decide the fate of that partnership, which is monopolized by the Houthi group, but they need it at the current time to confront the Presidential Leadership Council -characterized as part of GPC party-, they will likely push the Sana’as GPC party to confront the GPC party in Riyadh which currently leading the legitimacy, to create a political confrontation and increase the distance between them, and prevent any convergence between the wings of the GPC party, or their unification under one party.