JEDDAH, 20 October 2004 — The semi-elected municipal councils in the Kingdom will have four to 14 members each, according to Prince Mansour ibn Miteb, chairman of the general election committee. He said big cities such as Riyadh, Dammam, Jeddah, Makkah and Madinah would have 14 members.
Half the members of 178 municipal councils in the Kingdom’s 13 regions will be picked in the landmark nationwide elections which are to be held in three stages beginning from Feb. 10, while the other half will be named by the government, the chief election officer said.
Prince Mansour said the elections, the first nationwide ballot in the Kingdom, would be held on the basis of a 1977 law, because “there had not been enough time” to draft new legislation since the government announced its intention to hold the polls a year ago. But the law would be amended or changed for the following elections, to take place four years after the upcoming polls.
The elections are part of political reforms introduced by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd to enhance public participation in the decision-making process.
Interior Minister Prince Naif earlier this month ruled out the participation of women in the upcoming ballot, despite the fact that the text of the regulatory framework for the elections did not explicitly exclude them.
“The rules did not bar women ... but we concluded it would be difficult to apply monitoring and regulatory criteria regulating women’s participation in the next round,” Prince Mansour said.
Asked if women would be allowed to take part in future elections, he said officials in charge of those polls would examine the issue. The importance of the 2005 municipal ballot “is that it will establish an election infrastructure and promote a culture of elections among citizens,” he added.Election officials in Riyadh have claimed that the lack of qualified women to run women’s-only registration centers and polling stations, plus the fact that only a small percentage of Saudi women have photo-identity cards needed for voting, were the main obstacles in women participating in the elections.
According to a report carried by Al-Jazirah, municipal councils in Taif, Al-Ahsa, Buraidah, Abha, Hail, Tabuk, Jizan, Baha, Najran, Al-Jouf and the Northern Border Province will have 12 members while those in Khamis Mushait, Unaizah, Alkharj, Hafr Al-Baten and Yanbu will have 10 members.
The councils in governorates (muhafedas) and centers (marakiz) will have six to eight members while rural centers will have four members, the paper said.
