MANAMA, 2 November — Results in Bahrain’s run-off elections yesterday showed a mix of secular and Islamist candidates sharing the control of the country’s first democratically elected legislature in nearly 30 years, with women the biggest losers.
Although two of the eight female candidates made it into Thursday’s second round, women were eventually deprived of making history in the traditionally male-dominated region.
Final results showed Islamists topping up gains made in the first round a week earlier after the main opposition forces kept up a boycott of the ballot in protest at constitutional amendments they deemed undemocratic. Voter turnout wasn’t immediately announced.
Fourteen Sunni and two Shiite Islamists, in addition to a Sunni Islamist scholar who ran as an independent, won mandates in the 40-seat Parliament, the first to be elected since a legislative assembly was scrapped in 1975. The 14 Sunni Islamists are split equally between adherents of the Salafi persuasion and the Muslim Brothers. The latter include the head of the National Islamic Forum, the political association of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Three liberals, two of them Sunnis and the third Shiite, were also elected. The 20 remaining winners are independents whose bids for Parliament were backed by either the government or the Islamists.
Women lose out
Commenting on the failure of the two women to win seats, Information Minister Nabil Al-Hamer said: “I am personally very sad at the outcome. But ... we accept the results.”
In the first round last week, six women were knocked out of the race, leaving Latifa Al-Guoud, a 46-year-old British university graduate, and Fawzia Al-Ruwaie, a 41-year-old military nurse, the only female hopefuls. “I don’t feel like a loser. This was a great learning experience and I hope that Bahraini women don’t have to wait long to get into politics,” Al-Ruwaie said.
In Riffa, south of the capital Manama, Al-Guoud seemed close at one point to becoming the first woman to be elected to Parliament in any of the six Gulf Cooperation Council states before seeing her hopes dashed by her rival Jassim Ahmed Al-Saeed, a Sunni religious scholar. She lost by a 280-vote margin, garnering 1,393 votes to Al-Saeed’s 1,673, state television reported yesterday. Al-Ruwaie lost by 388 votes, securing 1,017 compared to 1,405 for secularist Yousuf Zainal.
Kuwait is the only other Gulf Arab nation with an elected parliament. But women are barred from running and voting. Although no women have been elected to the 40-seat chamber, they seem to have fared better compared to May’s municipal elections when the voters — a slight majority of whom are women — rejected all 31 women candidates outright.
“I am not surprised by the outcome of the elections, but I am disappointed,” said activist Suroor Qarooni of the Bahrain Women Society. “When it comes to making the real decisions, a man always takes charge and unfortunately women also sometimes fail to trust their own mental abilities,” she said.
The Islamic National Accord Association (Al-Wefaq), the main Shiite political grouping, spearheaded a campaign to boycott the polls because the Parliament’s second chamber appointed by the king will have as much power as the elected assembly.
Al-Wefaq leader Ali Salman said yesterday that he was not worried by the new Parliament’s Sunni majority “because our program is national.” The Islamists’ strong showing “reflected the social reality in Bahrain and should be welcomed,” he said.
Abdul Rahman Al-Nuaimi, whose leftist National Democratic Action Association was another of the four groups that boycotted the polls, said the new Parliament would be weakened by the boycott and the “limited powers” granted the chamber.
“The government remains the major player at both the legislative and executive levels,” he said.
Adel Al-Moawdah, a leading Sunni scholar who won a seat in the first round of voting, told reporters the Parliament’s priority was to “improve the standard of living, fight corruption and unemployment.”
