MANAMA, 13 November 2006 — Thirteen days ahead of Bahrain’s parliamentary and municipal elections, the head of the largest Shiite opposition expressed continued fears over efforts by the government to bar the opposition from winning seats by buying votes and handing Bahraini en masse citizenship to foreigners.

In a press conference yesterday, Sheikh Ali Salman, secretary-general of the Al-Wefaq Society, said that a huge amount of “political money” was being handed out to buy votes in an attempt to influence the election results.

According to him the money is distributed in cash, used to pay utility bills and buy food for voters in some instances, but in more glaring instances tens of thousands of dinars have been directed to institutions to have them encourage their members to vote for specific candidates.

“We are aware of candidates promising to pay as much as 350,000 dinars ($930,000) to buy a building for a feminist society in exchange for their members’ votes, while another grouping has promised 60,000 dinars ($159,000) to support a certain project in exchange for endorsement,” he said.

Salman also said they were alarmed by the rate the government has continued its “political naturalization,” which the opposition claim is an effort to change the demography of the island nation.

“We believe that in the last two weeks an average of 200 people were referred on a daily basis to the naturalization authorities to obtain passports,” he said.

Salman renewed the opposition’s call to have the 10 general voting centers shut down and limiting voting to centers within districts. “The general centers are not necessary and no monitors for the candidates are allowed there,” he said.

“Bahrain is small and most of the district voting centers are within a three kilometer radius of the voters so I cannot see why a voter would not be able to head to these centers during the 12-hour voting period,” he added.

Salman said the opposition was concerned about the fact that the Central Information Organization (CIO) was still in charge of overseeing the elections despite an earlier move by the government to distance itself from the agency because of allegations of corruption and vote manipulation.

Bahrain’s parliamentary and municipal elections will take place on Nov. 25, with a second round, if needed, to be held on Dec. 2.