by Assaad Abboud – RIYADH (AFP)
Saudi King Abdullah on Sunday granted women the right to vote and run in municipal elections, in a historic first for the ultra-conservative country where women are subjected to many restrictions.
“Starting with the next term, women will have the right to run in municipal elections and to choose candidates, according to Islamic principles,” he said in speech to the Shura Council carried live on state television.
Women’s rights activists have long fought to gain the right to vote in the Gulf kingdom, which applies a strict version of Sunni Islam and bans women from driving or travelling without the consent of a male guardian.
Manal al-Sharif, a 32-year-old computer security consultant who was arrested on May 22 and detained for 10 days after posting on YouTube a video of herself driving around the eastern city of Khobar, told AFP the king’s decision was “a historic and courageous one.”
“The king is a reformist,” she said of the 86-year-old monarch, whose country was spared a wave of protests rocking the region by which autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt were toppled.
The king’s decision means that women will be able to take part in the elections that are to be held in four years, as the next vote is due to take place on Thursday and nominations are already closed.
In addition to participating in the only public polls in the country, women would have the right to join the all-appointed Shura (consultative) Council, he said in the address opening the assembly’s new term.
“We have decided that women will participate in the Shura Council as members starting the next term,” the king said in the unexpected move to enfranchise women.
More than 5,000 men will compete in Thursday’s municipal elections, only the second in Saudi Arabia’s history, to fill half the seats in the kingdom’s 285 municipal councils. The other half are appointed by the government.
The first elections were held in 2005, but the government extended the existing council’s term for two years.
King Abdullah said his decision came because “we refuse marginalising women’s role in the Saudi society in all fields,” and followed “consultations with several scholars.”
He did not mention anything about women’s right to drive in the kingdom where they must hire male chauffeurs, or depend on the goodwill of relatives if they do not have the means.
However, he said that “balanced modernisation which agrees with our Islamic values is a necessary demand in an epoch where there is no place for those who are hesitant” in moving forward.
Saudi Arabia has seen many changes since Abdullah became king in 2005.
Norah al-Fayez, who was named to the post of deputy education minister for women’s education in 2009, was the first woman ever named to a ministerial post in the country.
More than 60 intellectuals and activists had called in May for a boycott of the September ballot because “municipal councils lack the authority to effectively carry out their role” and “half of their members are appointed,” as well as because they exclude women.
The Shura Council had recommended allowing women to vote in the next local polls, officials have said.
In April, Samar Badawi said she was suing the municipal affairs ministry for upholding the ban on women taking part in the local poll.
Badawi filed a lawsuit at the administrative court in Mecca against the ministry for denying women the right to register as voters.
Also in April, a group of women defied the ban on women in elections by turning up at a voter registration office in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, in a rare public demonstration against the male-only electoral system.
But they were turned back by the head of the centre who told them women were still banned from voting.
The oil-rich Sunni kingdom has however seen minor sporadic demonstrations by Shiites that took place in its Eastern Province.
Sahrif was the icon of a campaign through which a group of defiant Saudi women got behind the steering wheels of their cars on June 17 in response to calls for nationwide action against the ban on driving.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has publicly thrown her support behind the campaign, saying that “what these women are doing is brave, and what they are seeking is right.”
“The Saudi woman, will for the first time, become a partner in decision-making. I hope she gets assigned as a minister,” said Sharif.
