I have always been an advocate of elections. I eagerly awaited the recent municipal elections in the Kingdom, seeing in the process a historic shift, a landmark development that could transform Saudi society.
Now that the election is over and the scenes of hustle and bustle that animated our cities over the past months are no more, allow me to say openly and loudly: To hell with elections if elections are what we have just seen.
We don’t need to do any such thing ever again. It would be better for us to return to where we were before this election business came into our lives, go back to when we were managing our business as we had always done.
It is unfortunate that a good start — which won our confidence and appreciation and which made a good initial impression on everyone who was optimistic about what the elections could mean to the country — came to naught. I personally wrote thousands of words in my columns praising and hailing the process as one of the happiest moments in our nation’s history despite the shortcomings that would inevitably accompany something happening for the first time. Had I known that the good start would bring us to where we are now, I would have objected to elections, now or in future, municipal or otherwise.
We don’t want an election that instead of serving the purpose for which it was organized turns into something totally different from our expectations. We don’t want a municipal election to turn into an ideological conflict splitting society into two camps, one of faith and righteousness and another of infidelity and immorality.
We don’t want rifts and fissures in our society in addition to the ones we already have. We don’t want an election that ends up earning the hostility of both the state and society. We don’t want an election where one group decides who should be elected and who should not.
An election, in its simplest form, means freedom, the freedom of people to choose. That was the motto which we Saudis heard as we at last tried to catch the freedom train. Sadly, however, our election turned out to be the election of the “golden” and “diamond” lists.
Reports tell us of complaints and appeals being accepted and rejected and of many who were hesitant to make a moral and national decision about an infant experiment that saw some trying to hijack and turn it into a base for their own future plans.
