With every respect to the candidates standing in Thursday’s municipal elections, the most important result was not their winning or losing but the fact that the elections took place at all. It was indeed a historic day. However, as the excitement fades, we need to sit down and analyze what went well and what could be done better.
There is no doubt that the high turnout looked excellent compared with the voter apathy in many long-standing democracies. Unfortunately, only 32 percent of the 470,000 eligible citizens had actually chosen to register to vote in the first place. This means that on the election day, many of the 150,000 who had registered did not actually go to polling stations. Lessons have clearly been learned here, as evident from the surprising number of citizens who said after Thursday that they wished that they had registered after all. No doubt, thought will be given to making voter registration compulsory, though it seems likely that citizens will remain free to choose whether or not they will actually cast a ballot. Among those who did take part, there was widespread delight with the process.
The lack of female candidates and voters was picked on by outsiders and many citizens themselves as being a serious flaw. Such criticism rather overlooks the fact that female suffrage was long denied in both North America and Europe. There is widespread demand that women should be included in future elections, both as candidates and voters. Given the developments of female suffrage in our neighbors, it is going to become ever harder for more cautious conservative thinking to resist the expansion of the franchise. It may also be that while candidates may still need to be 21, the vote could be given to 18-year-olds, thus involving an important part of our population in the democratic process at an earlier stage. Three years may not seem a long time to older men, but it appears frustratingly long to young people.
A review is also clearly needed of the way the hustings were conducted. One key issue is a limit on the amount candidates may spend on their campaigns. It seems sensible to cap this now as, in this first election, substantial sums were expended by some individuals. The last thing that the Kingdom wants is to set off down the alarming path followed by US politicians, where you need millions of dollars to run for Congress and billions to go for the White House. Here it should be democracy, not dollarocracy or riyalocracy.
Among other issues to be considered is the complaint by some voters that candidates did not “connect “ with them and they did not feel truly involved in the election. To be fair to those running for office, given the low voter registration, it could be argued that too many voters didn’t connect actually with the election. Much will be learned from this first small but hugely significant step for the Kingdom. On balance, all those who took part as both candidates and voters should be very proud of the mark they made on history was well as on their ballot papers.
