It's slipped a bit below the media radar screen, but today another election takes place in the Middle East--in Saudi Arabia, of all places.
The Financial Times' Roula Khalaf reports that last-minute campaigning is still under way in the House of Saud's "first nationwide elections" in its history. To give you an idea of how rare this occasion is, the mutawa'a, or religious police, actually relaxed their ban on public displays of advertisements bearing images of the human face to allow campaign posters.
The elections, staggered over a period of three months, involve some 700 candidates running for Riyadh's city council. Voters will choose only half the Saudi capital's municipal government, with half appointed by the government. And, as Khalaf notes, the victors will have very limited powers.
Land ownership and distribution--a controversial issue because many plots are handed out to princes the al-Saud family--remain in the hands of the ministry of municipalities, which is headed by a royal.
It may not surprise you to learn that the Saudis forbid women from running for office, or from voting. Actually, this ban was a surprise of sorts to Saudi women, because the government had originally said that they could participate in the elections. Indeed, according to the Free Muslim Coalition Against Terror website, in November, 2004, "at least three women" indicated they might run for a city council slot.
But really, we should probably cut the Saudis a break here. As Raid Qusti wrote in an Arab News op-ed last December entitled "Why Women's Voting Is Complicated," the logistics of allowing females to cast their ballots are very difficult indeed. Why just imagine,
If a single woman won and became a member of the municipality council that would mean the government would have to construct a separate building for her. Whether she one female, two or ten, Saudi law forbids men and women to work in the same establishment.
As OpinionJournal's James Taranto points out, this restriction could also ban men from serving in the Saudi government, but never mind. As Qusti advises us, we need to look at Saudi Arabia "as a whole and weigh the reality of things." What is the weight of absurdity, anyway?
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