US calls first Saudi poll open to women ‘historic milestone’
It was the last country to allow only men to vote, and polling stations were segregated during Saturday’s vote.
This, being the first time women were both allowed to run and vote in Saudi Arabia’s municipal elections, is a historic decision which, according to Al Arabiya local news, recorded that 24% of voters were women.
Around 7,000 candidates, among them 979 women, were competing for 2,100 seats across the country. There was also complete separation between men and women at events during the campaign, with female candidates required to speak from behind a partition or have a man speak on her behalf. And now women will also have a power in the municipal council.
Rasha Hefzi, who won her seat in Jeddah, said: “The presence of a woman in the council now will mean she can have access to some of the files that were previously inaccessible to some women in the past”.
Two-thirds of the seats in the kingdom’s 284 municipal councils were open in Saturday’s elections. “However, 235 candidates, nine of them women, were stopped from participating due to violations, and they were penalized with SR50,000 each”. At least 18 of the female candidates were elected into local government seats; a number that represents about 10 percent of the total available seats.
General Election Commission spokesman Hamad Al-Omar said that out of 130,000 female registered voters, a staggering 106,000 cast ballots, or roughly 82 percent.
While successful female candidates could be found around the country, the lion’s share of winners tended to be clustered in the nation’s more cosmopolitan cities, with the most – four – coming from the capital Riyadh. When asked about this win, Salma bint Hizab al-Oteibi said, “My whole life has been a struggle”. The Eastern Province, where minority Shiites are concentrated, saw two women elected.
Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Sunni Islam has given rise to an informal system of male guardianship over women that requires women be accompanied by a male guardian to travel or go to school.
There had been heavy criticism in the lead up to the election from rights groups that the measure represented only limited progress due to the undemocratic nature of the country and heavy restrictions on women’s right to campaign.