Saudi Municipal Elections - 
Round Two 

The second phase of voting in Saudi Arabia's municipal elections is set for today in Eastern Province, Asir, Jizan, Najran, and Baha Regions.  This item provides articles addressing today's polling and the general issues surrounding the elections in Saudi Arabia.  

EP Municipal Elections Today
Molouk Y. Ba-Isa, Arab News

ALKHOBAR, 3 March 2005 — Today the Eastern Province elects its municipal representatives after a two-week campaign that was largely split down sectarian lines. Doctors, lawyers, engineers and other highly educated professionals are among the candidates vying for municipal council seats.

But education and experience were not of foremost importance when people considered potential candidates. Perceived religious affiliation was the overwhelming factor in attracting supporters. Next came tribal and familial alliances, and only after those were considered, was possible suitability for the council position of any importance.

“Shia, Sunni, Islamist or reformist these were the first points that we must know about any candidate,” said registered voter Fahad Al-Qahtani. “Then we checked whether he might be one of our relatives, even distantly. Since this is the first election, no one has any experience in politics. I don’t believe that a highly educated man would serve my interests any better than my cousin.”

That might be so but many candidates discovered to their dismay that most of their friends and relatives never registered to vote and thus couldn’t support them. Population numbers published in 2003 by the Eastern Province Chamber of Commerce put total Saudi male population in the Eastern Region at approximately 1,182,000.

Of that number only about 140,000 registered to vote. Even if perhaps just 50 percent of the total male Saudi population were eligible to vote due to factors such as age and military service, the voter registration was still distressingly low. Voters in the Asir, Baha, Jizan and Najran regions will also go to polls today in the second phase of elections aimed at picking half the members of the country’s 178 municipal councils. The General Election Commission has appointed more than 400 officials to monitor elections at 222 polling stations in the five regions today.

Saudis in the Riyadh region elected their members on Feb. 10 in the first phase. Elections in Makkah, Madinah, Qasim, Tabuk, Hail, Al-Jouf and the Northern Border Province will take place on April 21 in the last phase.

Convincing People to Take a Small Step
Abeer Mishkhas, abeermishkhas@arabnews.com

"During a roundtable media discussion with British journalists last week in London, one commented that municipal elections in Saudi Arabia were only a miniscule step towards democracy. He observed that other countries, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, were actually holding presidential elections, which signified political maturity and the drastic changes taking place in those countries.

"For my part, I said that no matter how small the step, I think it matters to every Saudi. Our problem, however, is not in what kind of elections we have but rather that we simply have no idea of what elections are or are supposed to accomplish. The entire political concept is very hazy here; people have different ideas about elections, most of them acquired from reading about other countries’ experiences or watching TV coverage of other countries’ elections. I suggested that this lack of awareness was an important factor in low voter turnout in Riyadh."      [more]

Of the voters who have registered, some have decided not to vote anyway. “Not one candidate has spoken about youth issues,” claimed one 21-year-old university student. “I hope on the ballot there is a box to check which reads ‘none of these candidates is acceptable,’ because that’s the only box I’m interested in registering my vote for.”

Some religious leaders got into the election fray by commenting on the candidates’ campaign tactics. In last Friday’s sermon, Sheikh Mohammed Saleh Al-Munajid speaking at the Omar ibn Abdul Aziz Mosque stated that the enormous photographs on campaign posters were unacceptable. He pointed out that in any case such photographs were unnecessary, because people shouldn’t vote for a candidate based on his appearance. He also commented that he considered the amount of money being poured into advertising for the election to be extravagant.

Women have stood on the fringes of the campaign, becoming increasingly frustrated as the election approached. Disenfranchised, they were still inundated with SMS messages and brochures were pushed at them in shopping centers and coffee shops in the hopes that they would influence their male relatives.

However, women who offered to help with candidates’ campaigns were politely but firmly refused. One female international correspondent who attempted to listen to a discourse being piped through loudspeakers at one candidate’s tent in Dammam was instructed to leave.

This was even though she was seated in the back seat of an automobile in a public parking area. Another candidate when asked to have his photograph taken by this journalist, declined. He stated that although he was not an extremist by any means, he didn’t want to risk any sort of association with a woman at this time. The situation concerning women’s involvement in the campaigns is slightly better in Al-Qatif where the entire community is working hard to ensure Shiite candidates take all five municipal seats.

“Although we cannot vote, these candidates are supposed to represent us, too,” said Om Muntassir from Alkhobar. “Many candidates tell my husband that they are interested in supporting women’s employment and women’s voting, but I find it disturbing that most of the candidates do not want to speak with me, even if I reach them on their mobile numbers. If they don’t want to talk to me now, I don’t think they’ll have much interest in speaking with me after they are elected.”

Reprinted with permission of Arab News