Chairman of the Lawyers Committee in Jeddah Majid Qaroub said the council had noticed a lack of election culture in the Kingdom. He said that the country was still in the first stage of developing its electoral system. The report recommended all government agencies to work on educating citizens about the elections.
According to Qaroub, the voting locations were not perfect, as there had been no specified locations for the handicapped and the elderly. Besides, he said, there were no cafeterias to provide water for voters and no air-conditioners in some of the polling stations, which had increased voters’ anger.
Qaroub however said that the election strategy had gone well in 752 election centers. Only 10 centers, located in Riyadh, Asir, Qassim, Dammam and Makkah, had to close for five hours because of the crowd and some skirmishes.
The heads of election centers had not been fully aware of the strategy to work with observers, said Qaroub. The media, both government and private, had also committed several mistakes during the election coverage. “They were not neutral,” he said.
The national council issued a number of recommendations for the next elections.
“We want all civil society organizations to participate in the next elections. They were not involved in the elections, although they had been invited to,” said Qaroub. He added that all private companies had been absent, despite the fact that it is part of companies’ social responsibility to participate in the elections. Most companies did not allow their employees to go vote, and employees who left work early to vote were considered absent, he said.
Qaroub also called for the importance of finding a way to deal with illiterate people, who mostly asked employees for help.
“We are afraid that the employees advised these voters to choose a certain candidate,” he said.
Qaroub welcomed the participation of women in the next municipal elections and called for special centers to receive about 2 million Saudi women voters.
“It is important to share the franchise with women. Their participation will improve the election process,” he said.
Qaroub said he also welcomed the participation of Saudi female lawyers and engineers in the national council to observe the elections, but they had not shown any interest.
