Saturday’s historic elections for municipal councils marked the first time women in the country were allowed to vote and to run for office.
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The first was Salma bint Hizab al-Oteibi, who was elected to the council of Madrakah, in the city of Mecca. Around 7,000 candidates, amongst them 979 women, competed within the election for a seat on the municipal councils, in that are the one authorities body elected by Saudi citizens.
We can tell that the political landscape of Saudi is changing, what with women now being allowed to not only vote but also register as electoral candidates.
Women could not directly meet any male voters during their landmark campaigns.
More than 80 percent of the 130,000 female registered voters cast ballots, according to The Associated Press. Seperately, when Saudi Arabia sent its female athletes to the London Olympic games for the first time, hardliners denounced the women as “prostitutes”.
Al-Omar said 19 women won seats in 10 different regions, with results still to be announced in several more regions. According to BBC reports, around 1,30,000 women were registered for voting while the male vote count was 1.35 million. Significantly too, it draws attention to these and other challenges faced by a more modern and complex Saudi society whose stability can no longer rely on huge oil revenues.
There are almost 1300 polling stations in Saudi Arabia but only 424 have been reserved for women.
The conservative capital of Riyadh saw the most female candidates win, with four elected.
Two women won seats in Al Ahsa in Eastern Province, but their names were not immediately released.
While the councils do not have legislative powers, they do oversee a range of community issues, such as budgets for maintaining and improving public facilities like parks, roads and utilities. The oldest woman in the family was 94 year-old Naela Mohammad Nasief.
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Ms Al Fassi said Saudi women were now aiming to take the “next step” – holding those elected to the municipal councils “to account” for what they promised their constituencies. “I promise I will represent her by all means”, she said. Once we are fully prepared, more people will participate in it and more successful experience will be accumulated.
