Riyadh: The decision taken by the Saudi Municipal Elections Commission (MEC) banning women from voting in this year's elections has disappointed many Saudi women as well as men advocating the rights of women in the Kingdom.
The elections will be held all over Saudi Arabia on September 22. Saudi Arabia held its first men-only municipal elections in 2005.
The Commission justified its decision by lack of readiness at the polling centers which will make it impossible for women participation in these elections. The Commission, moreover, announced that foreign organizations would not be allowed to monitor the elections, adding that the elections will be honest.
"The law does not prevent Saudi women from taking part in municipal elections; however, she cannot be allowed to partially involve. Women will be allowed to take part at the appropriate time," Election Commissioner Abdul Rahman Al-Dahmash said during a press conference, without clarifying.
Meanwhile, a number of Saudi women activists as well as men advocating women rights described the Commission's decision as ‘unjustifiable and unacceptable.'
Speaking to Gulf News, they noted that Saudi women have realized significant achievements at the local and international levels and so they are capable in being candidates and voters in the upcoming municipal elections.
Suhaila Zain Abdeen, Saudi female human rights activist said the justifications put by the Elections Commission banning women from taking part in the elections and taking part in the reform process initiated by Custodian of the two holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz were unacceptable.
"We are looking for a political decision from King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz to have women, who constitute 49% of the Kingdom's population, take part in the forthcoming municipal elections," she said, adding that what was announced by the Commission is a discrimination against women and aims at depriving them from being involved in public life.
She criticized the performance of municipal councils saying that many Saudis do not know who the members of these councils are, what are they doing and where are the locations of these councils.
‘During the previous session of municipal councils natural calamities took place in Jeddah and large number of Saudi women involved as volunteers in rescuing and relieving those affected by these accidents, unfortunately the municipal councils were absent,' she pointed out.
For his part, Dr. Mohammed Al Zulfa, former member of the Shoura Council and woman's rights advocate said that not having women take part in the first municipal elections could be justified but after five years of the experiment, depriving women from the elections is unjustifiable.
"Saudi women have been actively involved in assisting those inflicted by heavy rains and floods which hit Jeddah last year. They have successfully took part in elections run by the chambers of commerce and in Saudi Engineering Society's elections, so what prevents them from taking part in municipal elections?," he noted.
Dr. Amira Kashghary, a Saudi female human rights activist criticized the double standards applied on Saudi women, saying that they participated as candidates and voters in the chambers of commerce lections, so why not the municipal elections?
It is worth noting that men-only municipal elections were held for the first time in 2005 when Saudis elected half the members of 178 municipal councils.
