Saudi Arabia prepares for local elections
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) -- Saudi Arabia has prepared the ground for municipal elections promised by the absolute monarchy and will start organizing election centers and voter lists later this year, a government minister said Saturday.
Municipal Affairs Minister Prince Mutib bin Abdul-Aziz was quoted by the official news agency SPA as saying the move was part of efforts to give Saudi citizens a greater role in running local affairs.
The conservative Gulf kingdom announced in October that it would hold municipal elections -- the first in four decades -- after pressure from the United States and domestic reformers to grant some political participation and freedom of expression.
Prince Mutib did not say whether women, who are still forbidden to drive in Saudi Arabia, would be allowed to vote or stand in the elections.
Prince Mutib said teams of legal, religious and technical experts had set up a basic framework for the elections and that "regulations for election of municipal councils will be published soon, God willing," SPA said.
Election centers, dates for voter and candidate registration, and procedures for electing 178 municipal councils would be determined according to a fixed timetable, it added.
"That will begin after the end of the summer holidays and the beginning of the academic year [in September]," the agency quoted the prince as saying.
When it announced in October plans for elections -- seen as the first concrete Saudi political reforms -- Saudi Arabia said half the council members would be elected and that preparations for polls should not take more than a year.
But diplomats see little chance of the elections themselves taking place by then. The arrest of several pro-reform activists in March and the government's ongoing battle with militants have also overshadowed the cautious reform program championed by de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah in recent months.
The United States is eager to promote reform in the Middle East and has encouraged its long-standing ally, the world's biggest oil producer, to speed up change since the attacks of September 11, 2001, which were carried out by mainly Saudi hijackers.
Saudi Arabia, which is also the birthplace of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and home to Islam's holiest sites, says it will not allow its cautious program of political change to be influenced by outside pressure.
Abdullah vowed in January to press on with "gradual and studied" change.
"We will not allow anyone to stand in the way of reform, whether through calls for immobility and stagnation or calls to leap into darkness and reckless adventure," he said.
Saudi Arabia has been under the dynastic rule of the house of Saud since its founding in the 1930s. Diplomats say local elections were held in parts of the western Hejaz province until the early 1960s.
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