MUSCAT, 6 October 2003 — Omani voters elected yet another male-dominated Shoura Council, shunning women candidates in the Gulf state’s first free election.
Final results of Saturday’s election showed voters re-elected the two women — Rahila Al-Riyami and Lujaina Mohsen Darwish — who served in the outgoing 83-member council, but ignored the 13 new female candidates.
Women had turned up in droves at the polling stations, hoping for better representation in the council after Sultan Qaboos last year introduced reforms granting voting rights to all citizens aged 21 and above.
Riyami gained over her previous results, winning 741 votes over the 421 in the last election. Lujaina won 1,127 votes, compared to 603 in the 2000 elections. Both belong to Muscat.
Ali Al-Badi, from the province of Sahn, 180 km west of Muscat, won the most votes, with 2,974.
Thirteen male candidates were also re-elected.
Some women voters said their husbands had pressured them to vote for male candidates.
“My husband said I should vote for our relative, who is a man, and not a woman who is not related to us,” voter Fathiya Salim said.
“I am extremely disappointed. I thought this was our chance to have more women councilors, but perhaps we have not campaigned hard enough,” said Riyami. “I think we can trace the outcome to men’s influence on the voting patterns of women, who are told to vote for relatives or acquaintances despite the government’s efforts to persuade voters to go for competence,” she added.
She hailed the encouragement women were getting from the government, but dismissed suggestions that authorities had interfered to ensure that at least two women remained in the council, stressing that candidates saw for themselves that the election was free and fair.
Voters appeared to favor fellow tribesmen or relatives in a country where tribal and family links are a dominant factor in people’s lives, reducing the chances of female candidates despite Oman having been the first Gulf Arab country to give women the right to vote and run for public office in 1994.
Information Minister Hamad Al-Rashdi also flatly denied that the government had intervened in favor of women, saying that while it has encouraged women and appointed a number of them to senior public posts, it was Omani society that had its say on Saturday. “People want democracy. Well, this is democracy,” he said.
