Saudis hold their last all-male election

RIYADH — Men in Saudi Arabia cast ballots on Thursday in municipal elections, the second-ever nationwide vote in the kingdom. Women will be able to do so in 2015.

Some 5,324 candidates were competing for 1,056 seats — only the second elections in Saudi Arabian history — to fill half the seats in the country’s 285 councils. The other half are appointed by the government.

The first elections in the country, which has a population of around 27.5 million, including around 19 million Saudis, were held in 2005, but the government extended the existing council’s term for two years.

Around 1.2 million male voters registered to take part. The results of the vote are expected on Sunday.

The local councils are one of the few elected bodies in the country but have no real power, mandated to offer advice to provincial authorities.

The local council vote was initially due in 2009 but was postponed. The kingdom has 1.2 million registered voters out of 5 million men who could be eligible to vote.

Saudi media said voting went off to a slow start. Voting was also slow in the country’s economic capital, the port city of Jeddah on the west coast.

“I voted for a colleague of mine,” said retired teacher Ibrahim Ghazi, adding that he “didn’t check any of the manifestos of the candidates and didn’t know other names.”

On Sunday, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia — who is seen as a reformer — decreed that women would be allowed to vote in the next local elections, scheduled for 2015. He also said women will be appointed to the all-male Shura Council.

But the moves were also seen by some as insufficient. It was a significant step forward for Saudi women. But many proponents of women’s rights questioned why they had to wait four years to vote. Hussein Sharif, head of the human rights association in the holy city of Makkah, said: “Women still have a long way to go” to gain their rights.

And Fahad Al Harithi, head of Asbar Centre for Studies, Research and Communications, said: “The road for women to gain their rights is still too long. She is still marginalised ... in terms of her rights and duties.”

Advocacy group Human Rights Watch also welcomed the king’s decision but said it came too late. “King Abdullah’s promise that women will finally be allowed to vote is a welcome move,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East director.


(2011-9-30/khaleejtimes)