Initial results show 3 Saudi women elected for first time

Online taxi-hailing service Uber will give Saudi Arabian women lifts to polling stations for free on Saturday to help boost female participation at the first elections in the deeply conservative Islamic kingdom open to female voters.

Saudi Arabia observed its third elections on Saturday, and in a surprising turnout, two female candidates were elected to Ihsaa municipal council seats while one won a seat in Taoubok and one in the the heart of the Holy Kingdom – Mecca.

Overall results from the capital Riyadh and other major regions were expected to be announced sometime Saturday by the General Election Commission.

At least three women have won in Saudi Arabia’s historic municipal elections, according to initial reports.

Saudi Arabia, which is ruled by the al-Saud family of King Salman, has no elected legislature and has faced intense scrutiny from the West over its human rights record.

Only 1.48 million Saudis from a population of 20 million registered to vote in the election, including 131,000 women, the widespread apathy partly the product of a poll with no political parties, strict laws on campaigning, and in which only local issues are at play.

A slow expansion of women’s rights began under Salman’s predecessor Abdullah who announced four years ago that women would take part in the 2015 municipal elections.

By mid-afternoon, only a few dozen voters had come to a polling place for women in north Riyadh, an election worker there said.

Recommended: How much do you know about Saudi Arabia? Several women blamed the cumbersome registration process for the low numbers.

About 130,000 women registered to vote, officials said.

Despite the presence of female contenders on the ballot sheet for the first time, Marzooq said she had picked a male candidate because of his ideas including more nurseries.

“I walked in and said “I’ve have never seen this before”.

Another woman, Hanouf bint Mufrih bin Ayid al-Hazmi, won in the northwestern region of Jawf, SPA said, adding that neighbouring Tabuk elected two women. “Only in the movies”, Sahar Hassan Nasief said, referring to the ballot box.

“I did my best, and I did everything by myself”, said the 57-year-old management consultant, running in the Diriyah area on the edge of Riyadh.

The municipal council races across the kingdom also included the first female candidates – more than 950 in total – seen as pioneers by many but also denounced by some hard-line Islamists as unfit for a public role. Some voters hope that the elections will eventually be held for the advisory parliament, the Shura Council.