Saudi Arabia - Elections
Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam and home to Islam's two holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina. The king's official title is the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. The government bases its legitimacy on its interpretation of sharia (Islamic law) and the 1992 Basic Law, which provides that the Koran and Sunna (the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) serve as the country’s constitution.
In the 2005 elections (the first since 1963), only male, nonmilitary citizens at least 21 years of age were eligible to vote for 592 seats on 178 municipal advisory councils, or half the total seats. There were no independent election observers. Unofficial estimates were that between 10 and 15 percent of eligible voters actually voted. The king completed the formation of the councils in 2005 by appointing 592 men to fill the other half of the council seats.
On 13 May 2009, a group of 77 human rights civil society activists sent a petition to the king condemning secret tribunals, seeking permission for human rights activists to monitor prisons, and demanding political and judicial reforms, including a constitutional monarchy and the limiting of the terms of appointed royal family members in government posts. The petition was copied to the Royal Diwan and 20 senior officials. The activists retained a Web site at www.humriht-civsocsa.org, where the petition and other documents relating to human rights and civil society issues were posted.
On 18 May 2009, the state news agency reported after a cabinet meeting that elections for half of the seats on the municipal advisory councils (the only elected government office) scheduled during the year would be postponed until October 2011 to provide more time to study "expanding the participation of citizens in running local affairs."
Laws and traditional/cultural practices requiring strict segregation of genders encompassing every aspect of life prevented women from participating in political life on the same basis as men. Beginning in 2005, the government allowed women to run for positions on the boards of chambers of commerce and industry, but none has won a place. In 2008 two women were elected to the board of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry for four-year terms and three woman were appointed. During the year the number of female consultants on the Consultative Council increased from six to 10. There were no women on the High Court (women may not practice law) or on the Supreme Judicial Council. There was one woman in a cabinet-level position, as deputy minister for women's education.
King Abdullah introduced municipal elections upon his official ascension to the throne – as a largely symbolic valve mechanism. King Abdullah encouraged more women to go into education, and allocated them a fifth of the seats in his advisory chamber, also allowing them to vote and run in the 2015 municipal elections. At the same time, high-profile petitions demanding greater reform a decade ago landed their authors in prison. The country's sizable and restive Shia minority in the east - which led a series of public protests from 2011 onwards - is also systematically starved of political representation, somewhat inevitably, in a country led by a single Sunni family.
As of 01 March 2011 Saudi Arabia had avoided the wave of protests that had swept other Arab states. But activists had scheduled protests for March 11 and 20, 2011. And the Shiite minority in Sunni Saudi Arabia have shown solidarity with Shiite protesters in Bahrain. On Tuesday 01 March 2011 a group of over 70 Saudi intellectuals urged King Abdullah to enact reforms, calling on the king to oust corrupt politicians, curb government spending and provide better oversight of government business deals. They also called for giving more rights to the country's Shiite minority. On Sunday 27 February 2011 a group of over 100 leading Saudi academics and activists urged Abdullah to enact sweeping reforms, including relinquishing many powers under a constitutional monarchy. To preempt protests, the Saudi government announced a $36bn package of housing loans, unemployment benefits and pay rises.
In 2011, following a two-year postponement, the government held elections for the second time since 1963 for the country’s 285 municipal councils. Elected candidates filled half of the 1,632 seats, while the king appointed the other half. As in the first elections in 2005, participation was limited to civilian male citizens at least 21 years old. Uniformed members of the security forces, including the military and police, were ineligible to vote. According to the Municipal Council Elections Committee, there was no legal prohibition against women voting; however, as in 2005 the committee cited logistical and other technical reasons to explain why women were not allowed to vote or run for office.
Of the 6,440 candidates in the 13 December 2015 local elections, about 900 were woman, despite obstacles in running and registering to vote. The distance to voter registration centers and required ID cards that many women do not have hindered the process. Voting is rare in the kingdom. The local elections were the third time citizens have cast municipal ballots. At least two women won municipal council seats in Saudi Arabia's first election open to women voters and candidates. Early results showed Salma bint Hizab al-Oteibi is the first confirmed victory for a woman running for a municipal council seat, beating out seven men and two other women for the position in Madrakah, about 150 kilometers north of Mecca. On 20 November 1979 the Grand Mosque [aka Holy Mosque] in Makkah, the holiest shrine in all of Islam, was occupied by a group of armed Muslim extremists. The attackers had planned to seize the Mosque by filling coffins with weapons and smuggled them into the Mosque. On the morning of the day of seizure, they chained the gates of the Mosque, killed the two guards on-duty at the time, and held present worshippers hostages. They called on the people to revoke the current Saudi Monarchy and obey their leader, Abdullah Hamid Al-Qahtani. After more than two weeks of cross-fire with the Saudi Army, and with the help of Pakistani and French forces, the siege of the Mosque was ended. At least 250 people were killed and 600 injured, including worshippers, troops and insurgents. The surviving insurgents were captured by Saudi authorities and all of the surviving male radicals were beheaded. Far from discounting the dissidents, however, King Khalid made some effort to address their grievances. This event exposed the weakness of the royal family of Saudi Arabia, Al-Saud, and quickly put Saudi Arabia on the defensive, a position in which the kingdom found itself decades later. In Pakistan, news of the Siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the declaration by Khomeini that “…it would not be far-fetched to assume that this act has been perpetrated by the criminal American imperialism so that it can infiltrate the solid ranks of Muslims by such intrigues” motivated protestors to storm the US Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. The siege was led by a Muslim extremist who was a former theology student . He was attempting to officially put an end to what he called “Western influence” in the country. In 1978, a year before the siege, newspapers and magazines were publishing articles written by both men and women discussing women’s rights to participate in public life. Issues such as women’s right to drive, where women could and should work, and the types of education appropriate for women were all hot topics. However, discussions around increasing women’s freedom and mobility through education and work were perceived from the very beginning by the religious groups as dangerous “Western ideas”. Many political analysts opined that the Mecca siege was fuelled by the government stance on women’s rights and role in the development of the Saudi nation. In 1979, “Western influences,” as some conservative religious scholars argued were more obvious since women not only went to school but also started to enter universities. However, some historians argued that Mecca siege was not all about women’s freedom; it had a great deal to do with asserting the extremists’ views on all aspects of life.
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