RIYADH, 11 July 2004 — A government minister confirmed yesterday that the first ever elections in the Kingdom would take place as promised in the autumn to elect half the members of new municipal councils.
“Polling stations, dates of voter registration and the deadline for presenting candidacies and electing members for 178 municipal councils... in all cities and villages in the Kingdom’s 13 provinces will begin to be set, God willing, after the summer holiday and with the start of the academic year,” Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs Prince Miteb said.
“A detailed statement will be released at that time,” the Saudi Press Agency quoted him as saying. The academic year starts in mid-September.
Prince Miteb did not say whether women would be allowed to vote or stand in the elections.
The minister said he would “follow up the work of committees and working groups to complete preparations to hold the elections on time.”
Saudi leaders promised last October to organize the partial municipal elections within a year, and the plan was confirmed in King Fahd’s speech opening the sessions of the Shoura Council last month.
Prince Miteb said the committees and working groups had been in contact with international consultants and experts to hammer out arrangements for the municipal vote.
The committees had familiarized themselves with “world experiments in conducting municipal elections, the mechanisms applied and technologies used” as a prelude to putting in place “a comprehensive electoral system” compatible with the principles espoused by Saudi Arabia.
The working groups comprised opinion leaders, religious scholars, and people experienced in the legal, social, administrative and technical fields, who took part in studies drafted by the ministry “in cooperation with international experts and which laid down the procedural and practical bases for the electoral exercise,” Prince Miteb said.
Only half the members of the new municipal councils will be picked through elections, according to the government announcement last October. The prince’s remarks appeared aimed at putting to rest doubts at home and abroad that the partial election will be held at all. Reports at the time said elections would also be held within three years to fill one third of the 120 seats of the Shoura Council, and that half the members of regional councils would be elected within two years.
Shoura Council members expressed the hope that the municipal poll would lead to general elections. “The experience of the Shoura and the municipal elections will be positive factors in establishing the idea of elections so that they will become general and not just municipal,” Shoura member Saleh Al-Omeir was quoted as saying.
The planned municipal elections are part of a drive to introduce gradual reforms, which the Kingdom has stressed must be tailored to Saudi specifications and not necessarily follow a Western pattern after the US announced a controversial Greater Middle East Initiative for democratic reform in the Arab world.
