At least two women’s rights activists announced on Twitter that they had been disqualified as candidates.
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Saudi Arabia is the only country to bar women from driving and requires them to have a male “guardian” who can stop them traveling, marrying, working or having some medical procedures. Hamad Al-Omar executive committee member and media head for the elections said a toll-free telephone line has also been set up to help voters besides a voting system application which works on smart devices. “For me, it’s an opportunity for the whole country to participate”, she said.
“We will vote for the women even though we don’t know anything about them”, Um Fawaz, a teacher in her 20s, said in Hafr al-Batin city. According to the electoral commission, women will make up about six per cent of an electorate of 1.7 million people. But because of the kingdom’s strict separation of sexes – which applies to election facilities as elsewhere like restaurants – women will gather one day and men the next.
“I’ve been eliminated as a candidate for the municipal elections”, Loujain Hathloul said in a tweet.
“My daughter and two sons are running my campaign”, said Shamat, a charity worker. “I’m not looking at it as a woman or a man – I’m looking at it as an equal”.
The Late King Abdullah also decreed almost 20% of the Shura Council be female.
Other women encountered different forms of resistance.
This has led some women’s rights campaigners in the kingdom to describe the decision to grant women the vote in local elections as a distraction from bigger and more harmful rights violations.
Al-Nahda trained 125 volunteers who then went out and trained over 5,000 women as to how to have their voices heard through voting.
However, political parties remain banned and, in a sign of how far the Al Saud want to keep any whiff of national or ideological politics from the poll, several candidates with histories of activism have been barred from running. “Now they have given it to us I decided I have the ability to do it”.
“Things are getting worse and worse”, activist Aziza al-Yousef said.
Elections for the Shoura (Consultative) Council would be the next logical step, he said.
So a handful of women like al-Hababi are trailblazers, but what will she do if they don’t get win? “But I will definitely use all this experience to campaign harder and try again in the next election in four years”. The look on a girl’s face when you give her any information is priceless.
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“How could I be elected if I can’t drive, if I can’t have the right to custody of my children, when so many issues touching our daily lives aren’t resolved?”
