Ali Abdullah Saleh (President of Yemen 1978–2012; architect of Yemeni unity) — Yemeni Unity Day speech, 21 May 2016 (per Almrasil): celebrating the 1990 unification "whose flag rose high on 22 May 1990 in… Aden — that ended forever the two partition regimes… and reunited the Yemeni fold."

الوحدة اليمنية التي ارتفع علمها شامخاً يوم الـ22من مايو عام 1990م في مدينة عدن الباسلة, والتي أنهت وإلى الأبد النظامين الشطريين اللذين كانا قائمان في شطري الوطن، ولمّت الشمل اليمني وأعادت للتاريخ إعتباره

[Source is Arabic (Almrasil, a Yemeni outlet, reproducing the text of his Yemeni Unity Day speech, 21 May 2016); tier-2, confirmed verbatim against the fetched page.] English: "…Yemeni Unity, whose flag rose high on 22 May 1990 in the valiant city of Aden — [a unity] that ended forever the two partition regimes that existed in the two halves of the homeland, reunited the Yemeni fold, and restored history's regard for it." Declared position of Ali Abdullah Saleh (1947–2017) — President of North Yemen (1978–1990) and then of unified Yemen (1990–2012), who ruled for 33 years before being forced from power by the 2011 uprising (via a Gulf-brokered transition) and was killed in 2017 by his former Houthi allies after he turned against them. His single defining achievement and political identity was YEMENI UNITY: he forged the 22 May 1990 unification of North and South Yemen, crushed the 1994 southern secession attempt, and built a personalist, patronage-based regime around the General People's Congress (GPC). Here he frames unity as the irreversible end of Yemen's "partition" (الشطرين) and the reunification of the nation. This is the YEMENI-UNITY / CENTRALIST-STRONGMAN / authoritarian-stability pole — the defense of a single, unified Yemeni state against fragmentation — a historic anchor and the direct COUNTER-POLE to the Southern Transitional Council's secessionism (Aidarus al-Zoubaidi), as well as to the Houthi takeover that ultimately killed him. (He famously likened ruling Yemen to "dancing on the heads of snakes.") [Axes: national-unity / sovereignty (Yemeni unity; against partition and secession; centralism), regime-type (personalist authoritarianism; patronage; 33-year strongman rule), regional-identity (north–south integration; one Yemen), legitimacy (the unifier's mandate).]