Manama: Amina Al Abbasi, a Bahraini university student living Japan, was the first person from Bahrain to vote in the 2010 elections.
Hundreds of Bahrainis living abroad, on Tuesday, voted for their representatives in the 2010-2014 lower chamber of the bicameral parliament, but the time difference between the two countries meant Japan was ahead.
Approximately 310,000 citizens living in Bahraini will, on Saturday, go to the polling stations to elect the remaining 35 politicians, who will join the five already assured of a seat, to form the parliament.
Candidates have until early on Friday to promote themselves. Under Bahrain's elections laws, they must end their campaigns 24 hours before the polling stations open. Several were criticised in 2006 for using clever tricks to continue campaigning after the designated time.
But this year, the committee has urged voters, whose posters were in the vicinity of any of the 39 polling stations and 10 community centres, to remove them.
Bahrain has set up 40 stations in 40 constituencies, but the sixth constituency of the Southern Governorate will not be used, after the candidates for the parliament and for the municipal council won their seats in the absence of challengers.
It’s the second unopposed bid for Latifa Al Gaood who, in 2006, made history by becoming the first Bahraini woman to reach an elected parliament following the decision of her challenger to pull out of the race.
In 2010, no opponents signed up to challenge Latifa, whose performance in the outgoing lower chamber was considered successful. Only nine women, this year, signed up to run in the parliamentary elections and three in the municipal polls. Most have complained about the difficulties facing women candidates trying to break into a political system traditionally dominated by males.
None of the three major societies has included women on their electoral list. Al Wefaq, the largest parliamentary bloc from 2006 to 2010, presented a list of 18 candidates that did not include any women.
The Islamic Menbar, the expression of the Muslim Brotherhood, despite claims that it supports women as candidates, did not name any woman, either.
Both societies attributed their stance to claims that women had limited chances of winning in any constituency and therefore they did not wish to waste chances to win more seats.
Al Asala, the Salafi society, said it opposed any role for women in parliament.
Bahiya Radhi, a women's rights activist, who ran and lost in the 2006 municipal elections, said many women voted according to the wishes of their husbands or brothers who exercised some form of ‘sacred influence’ on them.