Saudi Men cast ballots in final round of key polls

Jordan Times Friday April 22, 2005

JEDDAH (AFP) — Saudi men went to the polls on Thursday in the final round of landmark municipal elections, with some pressing for wider public freedoms and others jealously defending the kingdom's Islamic identity against US pressure for reform. “I came to vote for candidates with an Islamic orientation. And I want this message to reach the United States and all the West,” said businessman Aref Al Ghamdi after casting his ballot at a municipality building turned into a polling station near Jeddah airport.

“There are external pressures to introduce reforms here. It's all in preparation for Americanization,” Ghamdi said, adding he had voted for six candidates on an informal “golden list” endorsed by prominent Muslim scholars, and a seventh who is also of Islamic orientation.

But Saleh Abdul Razzak, a 37-year-old schoolteacher, warned that the elections to pick half the members of municipal councils will be meaningless unless they are followed by more reforms.

“We need to have elected professional unions, for teachers and doctors for instance, to uphold these people's rights. We also need to be able to demonstrate peacefully,” he told AFP.

“And we want the Shura Council to be elected,” Abdul Razzak said, referring to a consultative body which is currently appointed.

Dozens of men, some of whom came before polls opened at 8:00am (0500 GMT), cast their ballots after sipping Arabic coffee and eating dates, traditional signs of Arab hospitality, courtesy of the municipality's head Mohammad Ali Yussef.

Women, who have been barred from the vote, were nowhere to be seen.

Smaller numbers voted at Al Aziziyah municipality, another of 45 polling stations catering for the Red Sea city of Jeddah, commercial capital of the oil-rich kingdom.

“All's going well,” said Musaed Al Shareef, one of 700 local observers deployed in polling stations across the regions covered by the third and final round of the local elections.

“We've had more than 100 voters” in the first couple of hours, he said.

“The voting is proceeding in a very orderly manner in all regions,” Sultan Al Bazie, media officer for the General Elections Committee, told AFP. Polls remained open in 258 stations until 5:00pm (1400 GMT) in Jeddah, Taef and Islam's holiest cities of Mecca and Medina in the west, and the northern regions of Al Qassim, Hail, Tabuk, Al Jawf and the Northern Frontier.

Around 83,000 men were registered to cast their ballots in the Jeddah region, including between 55,000 and 57,000 in the city itself, making up around 20 per cent of eligible voters, according to official estimates. Jeddah voters can choose up to seven representatives, one in each of the city's constituencies, from around 500 contenders coveting the seven elected seats on the local council.

The clerics-backed candidates are seen as having good chances of winning after they survived an attempt by rivals to disqualify them from running on grounds that they breached election rules by forming a “coalition.”

A total of 244 seats are up for grabs in the third round, which will complete the election of half the members of 178 municipal councils across Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter.

The remaining seats will be filled by the government.

In all, more than 4,600 candidates are courting the votes of some 333,000 registered voters aged over 21 and excluding military personnel.

The first two stages took place in the capital Riyadh and outlying areas on February 10 and in the oil-rich Eastern Province and southwestern regions on March 3.

Saudi leaders, who have been battling a campaign of attacks by suspected Al Qaeda members over the past two years, have responded to US plans to promote democracy in the Middle East with a cautious process of reform they say is tailored to domestic specifications.