Saudi Arabia’s women are running and voting for the first time in municipal elections on Saturday, though other restrictions are keeping their participation low.
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A young Saudi citizen Yazid al-Ajlan said the decree of late king for the right of woman to run municipal elections has now been implemented and the younger generation is fully supporting the change, and also they are with the elections.
A total of 978 women have registered as candidates, alongside 5,938 men.
Roughly 130,000 women registered to vote, compared with 1.35 million men, the BBC reports.
Amal Badreldin al-Sawari waves after casting her ballot in Riyadh, on December 12, 2015.
In response to such perspectives, Uber, the popular online taxi-hailing service, is offering free rides for women to and from polling stations throughout Saudi Arabia, in an effort to help increase the number of women at the polls throughout the kingdom Saturday. During the campaign period, female nominees could not address male voters and had to either present their programs from behind a partition, relying on projectors and microphones, or through male assistants and relatives.
The elections are for almost 300 local councils.
The fact that this was only the third time that Saudi citizens voted in an election meant that there was still little experience with the electoral process, Saadi said. We must stand up with moral courage against Saudi Arabia’s system of gender apartheid and move this country’s leaders into the 21st century with equal rights for all.
The election results are expected on Sunday.
To encourage women to present themselves and turn out to vote, a women’s group had held workshops around the country since 2011.
“It was not a good time for discussions about women’s empowerment”, said Alturki, who said most professions at the time were limited to men. Outside one centre for women in Riyadh, cars driven by men arrived every few minutes with female voters dressed in black robes.
“There is no reason, if this is applied to municipal councils, that they would not apply it to the Shura”, Riyadh Najm, a retired former government official, told Reuters.
In another nationwide first women were also standing as candidates in the election.
“Even if men take all the seats, I feel we still won”, said Munifa, a nurse who lives outside Hafr al-Batin city in the kingdom’s northeast, where camels and sheep awaited slaughter at a celebration to follow declaration of the winners. She was running against seven men and two women in the constituency, it added.
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Ruled by the al-Saud family of King Salman, Saudi Arabia has no elected legislature and faces intense Western scrutiny of its rights record. His decree mentioned, “Starting with the next election, women have the right to nominate themselves for the membership of the municipal councils”. Also, women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive vehicles. She wrote: “We take this opportunity to call on his Majesty King Salman to act on his promises and pardon my husband, end his and his family’s ordeal and unite him with his wife and children”.
