Saudi Arabia: First vote campaign for women concludes

Saudi Arabia’s first election campaign open to women ends Thursday but voters see little chance of a breakthrough for female candidates.

More than 900 women, along with some 6,000 men, are seeking seats on 284 municipal councils whose powers are restricted to local affairs including streets, public gardens and rubbish collection.

The vote has been hailed as a small step forward in the conservative Islamic kingdom, one of the most restrictive countries in the world for women.

But many voters said tribal allegiances — rather than a candidate’s gender — would be a big factor in the ballot.

Um Mohammed, a 47-year-old woman living near the Kuwaiti border, said her daughters had helped organise the campaign of a female candidate, but she herself would back a man.

“I am voting for this candidate because he is from our tribe and he will ensure our rights. He also has a good personality and we have never heard anything negative about him,” she said. Her husband had dinner with the candidate at his campaign tent, helping to confirm their choice, she said. Such tents — traditional male gathering places in Saudi Arabia that can be as large as houses — have been a common way for candidates to get their message across during Saudi municipal elections. Ballots for local councils have taken place twice before, in 2005 and 2011, with only male candidates and voters. Ruled for decades by the al-Saud royal family of King Salman, oil-rich Saudi Arabia has no elected legislature and has faced intense Western scrutiny over its rights record.