Question: The Southern Transitional Council, an autonomous and secessionist body whose 26 members, calls for the separation of southern Yemen, during the term of which former president, Yemeni politician?

 He was elected President of North Yemen (the Yemen Arab Republic) on 17 July 1978 at the age of 36. Ali Abdullah Saleh (Arabic: علي عبد الله صالح‎ ‎ , "ʿAlī ʿAbdullāh Ṣāliḥ"; born 21 March 1942) is a Yemeni politician who rose to power following the assassination of President al-Ghashmi.  Following the merger of North Yemen with South Yemen on 22 May 1990, President Saleh was sworn in as the new President.  Long considered a moderate President, he oversaw his country's development of deeper ties with Western powers, especially the United-States, in its fight against terrorism.  In 2011, in wake of the "Arab Spring" that spread across Yemen, Saleh's time in office became more and more untenable, until eventually he was ousted as President of Yemen in 2012.  He was succeeded in office by Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. <SEP> The South Yemen insurgency is a term used by the Yemeni government to describe the protests and attacks on government forces in southern Yemen, ongoing since 27 April 2009, on South Yemen's independence day.  Although the violence has been blamed on elements within the southern secessionist movement, leaders of the group maintain that their aims of independence are to be achieved through peaceful means, and claim that attacks are from ordinary citizens in response to the government's provocative actions.  The insurgency comes amid the Shia insurgency in the country's north as led by the Houthi communities.  Southern leaders led a brief, unsuccessful secession in 1994 following unification.  Many of them are involved in the present secession movement.  Southern separatist insurgents are active mainly in the area of former South Yemen, but also in Ad Dali' Governorate, which was not a part of the independent southern state. <SEP> The National Liberation Front (Arab: الجبهة القوميّة) or NLF was a Marxist paramilitary organization and a political party operating in the Federation of South Arabia, (now southern Yemen) during the Aden Emergency.  During the North Yemen Civil War, fighting spilled over into South Yemen as the British attempted to establish an autonomous colony known as the Federation of South Arabia.  Following the exit of the British armed forces, the NLF seized power from its rival, the Arab nationalist Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY).  In the aftermath of the Emergency, the NLF reorganized itself into the Yemeni Socialist Party and established a single-party Marxist-Leninist regime, known as the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. <SEP>  The movement has not stopped its activities toward this goal since its establishment in 2007, during the term of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Southern Transitional Council (Almajlis Alaintiqali Aljanubi; Arabic: المجلس الانتقالي الجنوبي‎ ‎  ) an autonomous and secessionist body whose 26 members include the governors of five southern governorates and two government ministers and is formed by the Southern Movement, also known as al-Hirak al-Janoubi, calls for the separation of southern Yemen.