Saudis go to polls - but no votes for women

Saudis in the Riyadh region began voting in the country’s first nationwide elections as polls opened today.

They had registration cards, voted behind privacy curtains, dropped ballots in boxes designed according to international standards and chose among candidates who ran Western-style campaigns, including posters, phone text messages and newspaper ads.

Forty years ago, in municipal polls limited to big cities, a candidate would slaughter a few sheep, throw a dinner party in a tent to announce his candidacy and, on election day, drive supporters – some even without identification – to write their names on his list.

When the polls opened, election officials at one Riyadh polling station opened the long grey ballot boxes and held them up for reporters to see that they were empty. The officials then closed, locked and placed masking tape over the covers of the boxes. Voters waited in line outside the polling station’s door.

The first of the three-stage elections are only for half the country’s municipal councils, and women have been banned from voting and running although the election law does not deny them those rights. But it marks the first time that Saudis were taking part in a regular poll that conforms to international standards, offering them a real, though small, opportunity to participate in decision-making in this absolute monarchy.

“Although such a step appears small and humble, it carries many implications, for it’s the first time that basic preparations for elections are held,” labour minister Ghazi Algosaibi said.

“These elections are a pioneering experience, the success of which will determine the following steps.”

More than 1,800 candidates are contesting 127 seats in the capital and surrounding villages, with almost 700 of them running for seven seats in Riyadh. Only 149,000 out of 600,000 eligible voters have registered to vote. Two more phases will cover the rest of the country in March and April.

The candidates’ 12-day campaign, a first in the kingdom, brought enthusiasm to what had until then been a lacklustre process. Campaigning ended yesterday afternoon.

Women will be watching the polls from the fringes. Election officials have said they were excluded because there was not time to prepare women-only polling centres and most women do not carry ID cards. But others privately acknowledge that this mostly conservative society would not have accepted the notion of a woman voting or running.

Sheikh Saleh bin Humaid, a cleric at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, said scholars were divided over the issue, with some supporting and others objecting to women’s involvement in elections.

Badriyah al-Bisher, one of several female columnists writing against the ban, said the government’s decision would “consolidate the inferior look that society gives them (women)”.

She made an analogy between their exclusion and the ban on women’s driving.

“We’ve been dumped in the back seat again, and only a man is allowed to drive us,” she said.

With more than 1,800 candidates in the Riyadh region, it was hard to determine how many Islamists were running. Many candidates are wealthy businessmen and landowners who have poured millions into their campaigns in the hope that if they win they will be able to influence licensing for their businesses. If they lose, the campaign will have been good self-promotion.

The powers of the councils are not clear, nor are their specific responsibilities. But analysts expect them to evolve into a conduit for public dissatisfaction, especially among poorer Saudis, that will bridge the information gap between the government and the people.