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In Saudi Arabia, Only Men Vote, And Not Often

Saudi men wait to cast their votes in municipal elections in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Thursday. Turnout appeared to be low. King Abdullah says that women will be allowed to vote in the next municipal elections, in 2015.
Hassan Ammar
/
AP
Saudi men wait to cast their votes in municipal elections in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Thursday. Turnout appeared to be low. King Abdullah says that women will be allowed to vote in the next municipal elections, in 2015.

In Saudi Arabia, where King Abdullah has the only vote that really counts, elections are still a novelty.

Municipal elections on Thursday marked just the third ballot in the kingdom's history. Only men could vote in polls to fill half the seats on some 300 municipal councils. The other half are appointed by the government.

Even before the polls closed, Saudi officials declared the election a success. But turnout appeared low at many voting stations, including in the capital, Riyadh.

The clear ballot boxes displayed in the middle of one pristine polling center were largely empty as closing time approached. The center's supervisor, Ali Alequeily, said only 80 of the 1,800 voters registered voters cast ballots. That's a turnout of less than 5 percent.

He himself was one of those voters. Another one was Dr. Mossad, an American-trained surgeon who marveled at how quickly he was able to cast his vote. But he, like the polling supervisor, was surprised by the low turnout.

By the end of the day you are electing individuals with no mandate and it's just municipal councils. We are ready to elect people in the Parliament.

Mossad believes one reason voters stayed away is that they were disillusioned with the previous councilmen, who advise local government officials on municipal services and development.

"There was not much improvement, I would say it, or even communication because if you try to call him, you cannot find him," he said of elected officials. "But I think this time they are trying to solve it and I hope they will solve it in the right way."

Hamad Saad Al-Omar, a spokesman for the Saudi Election Committee, said voting was still a new concept in the kingdom, and the local councils were a work in progress.

"We are learning from our mistakes," he said, adding that people didn't know what to expect from elected members of the municipal council. Now, measures giving the councils more power are in the works.

Activist Calls For Boycott

That wasn't enough to satisfy critics like Mohammed Fahad Al-Qahtani. He heads the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association in Riyadh, which called for a nationwide boycott of the polls. Qahtani says Saudis want a real say in how their affairs are run.

"By the end of the day you are electing individuals with no mandate and it's just municipal councils," he said. "We are ready to elect people in the Parliament."

Candidates like Yahya Zahrani criticized the boycott, saying it was hypocritical to demand democracy and then not cast ballots when given the chance.

Meanwhile, several Saudi women said they would have been thrilled to vote.

They were not allowed to because of a government ban. Officials claim they didn't have enough time to set up separate polling stations for women, who because of religious and social traditions are strictly segregated from men in public spaces.

Ruba, a 21-year-old college student who asked that only her first name be used to protect her family, was among dozens of Saudi women who had protested over being excluded. They went to registration centers across the country last spring in a failed effort to sign up.

"Of course it's disappointing because we demanded this five months ago and so it was enough time to prepare," she said.

King Abdullah announced on Sunday that women would be allowed to take part in future polls, and she then opted not to protest Thursday's ballot.

Other women said they feared a backlash from Saudi authorities, especially after a woman in the coastal city of Jiddah was sentenced this week to 10 lashes for flouting the kingdom's ban on women drivers.

Late Wednesday, the sentence was apparently canceled. The woman's attorney, Adnan al-Saleh, said the king's nephew called his client to tell her the news. Saleh added that they were still waiting for an official announcement.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Special correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson is based in Berlin. Her reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning programs, including Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and read at NPR.org. From 2012 until 2018 Nelson was NPR's bureau chief in Berlin. She won the ICFJ 2017 Excellence in International Reporting Award for her work in Central and Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan.