JEDDAH, 27 May 2004 — Municipal council elections in the Kingdom are planned for the month of Muharram, corresponding to February 2005, a local press report said yesterday. The report also said that the list of candidates and polling centers would be ready in October this year.
“The municipal elections in the Kingdom’s regions are expected to begin in Muharram,” Al-Yaum Arabic daily reported, quoting high-level sources in Riyadh. The paper said officials had held meetings during the past few days in order to identify the polling stations.
“The sources did not rule out the possibility of holding general elections in the Kingdom,” the report added.
Saudi Arabia announced last October that the first elections in the Kingdom would take place within a year for the election of half the members of 14 municipal councils. Semi-official reports have since said elections would be held within three years to fill one-third of the Shoura’s 120 seats and that half the members of regional councils would be elected within two years.
Saleh Al-Omeir, a Shoura Council member, expressed the hope that the municipal poll would lead to general elections. “The experience of the Shoura and the municipal elections will be a positive factor in establishing the idea of elections so that they will become general and not just municipal,” he said in a press statement.
Al-Omeir denied suggestions that Saudis are not in favor of democracy and said consultation in public matters was a divine order. “There are more similarities between the Shoura and democracy than differences,” said Dr. Saleh Al-Malik, another Shoura member.
He also said that the participation of women in the Shoura Council was under study and that a decision on whether women would be able to vote in the municipal elections would “not take a long time.”
The decision to hold municipal elections was taken at a Cabinet meeting.
