Saudis Announce First Elections by BBC World News 9:20am 14th Oct, 2003   13 October, 2003,    Pressure is great on the Gulf monarchy to reform. Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, has announced it will hold its first council elections, in a move seen as the kingdom's first real political reform.    The government decided to "widen the participation of citizens in running local affairs through elections", the state news agency SPA reported. Half the members of future councils will be elected under the reform.    The desert kingdom has never had political elections at any level since its creation in 1932. The council elections are to be held within a year, SPA said, quoting from a statement by the Council of Ministers.    "[This decision comes] to implement King Fahd's speech about widening popular participation and confirming the country's progress towards political and administrative reform," the statement added.    Saudi Arabia's holy sites make it the centre of the Islamic world. The announcement came as a conference on human rights - the first ever in Saudi Arabia - got under way in the capital, Riyadh. Academics and human rights activists from around the world are attending the two-day event.    The BBC's Middle East analyst, Roger Hardy, reports from Riyadh that the conference, entitled "Human rights in peace and war", is being prominently reported in the country. Among the issues on the agenda will be the rights of women and children.    Opening the conference, the Saudi Interior Minister, Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz, referred to the millions of people around the world whose rights were threatened by war and terrorism. He singled out the plight of the Palestinians, and our correspondent says his remarks indicate that the Saudi authorities want the conference to be broadly rather than narrowly focused.    Our correspondent says the prospect of limited council elections may be too little for some in Saudi Arabia, who have been calling for full national elections. Observers report that Saudi Arabia has been under mounting pressure to reform its institutions.    The issue has gained urgency since the wave of suicide bombings in Riyadh on 12 May which left 35 people dead, including the nine bombers. Saudi citizens were also extensively involved in the 11 September attacks on America. US politicians and commentators have accused Saudi Arabia's mixture of autocratic rule and puritanical Wahabi Islam of providing a fertile breeding ground for fanaticism and violence.    Within the country, the attacks have spurred liberals and moderate Islamists to openly express their dismay at what they consider an expanding "culture of violence" promoted by religious radicals.    Riyadh. October 15, 2003.    "Saudis to hold first elections" by Isa Mubarak. (Published by the Age Newspaper).    Saudi Arabia will hold elections for municipal councils, a move seen as its first solid political reform in almost 80 years.    Half the members of the new local assemblies will be elected in what is considered an unprecedented concession by the House of Saud, which has ruled as an absolute monarchy since the Saudi kingdom's creation in 1926.    The only elections that have been held in Saudi Arabia were those by businessmen to choose the head of the Saudi chamber of commerce.    The cabinet announcement resulted from growing reformist demands on de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah to allow wider political participation, elections and freedom of expression.    Saudi Arabia, a conservative Muslim kingdom, will join a growing trend towards experiments in democracy in Gulf countries.    The announcement did not say whether women, who are still forbidden to drive, will be allowed to vote.    "The council of ministers decided to widen participation of citizens in running local affairs through elections by activating municipal councils, with half the members of each council being elected," the state news agency SPA said.    The agency suggested that the rest would be named by the state, and said preparations for polls should take about a year.    Since the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US - in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis - Saudi Arabia has come under intense pressure by key ally Washington to fulfil social and political reform in what is the cradle of Islam and the world's largest oil exporter.    Al-Watan daily columnist Mohammed al-Harfy said he hoped the decision was not a single move to appease reform calls. "I think this is a positive step because many people in our society have been calling for comprehensive elections, including municipal," he said. "But this is not enough. We hope these elections are a beginning and would lead to elections in the Shura Council, in universities and the right to form syndicates."    Former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia Sir Andrew Green said: "This is a small but very significant step. It is the first election of any kind in Saudi Arabia. The country does not even have an electoral register."    The September 11 attacks and the wars against al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein have forced the House of Saud to consider radical reforms to maintain its authority.    The decades-old alliance with America - whereby Washington ensures the security of the House of Saud while Riyadh ensures stable supplies of oil - is under strain.    Changes in smaller Gulf states and the war in Iraq have left Saudi Arabia as one of the last bastions of absolute rule and internal repression. With incomes falling because of a population explosion, there have been growing demands from reformists, intellectuals and academics to liberalise the political system.    Encouraged by Prince Abdullah's call in January for general Arab reform, liberals have issued petitions demanding an independent judiciary, constitutional reforms, elections to the consultative Shura Council, freedom of expression and the creation of institutions of civil society and economic reform.    Last month, several women's names were for the first time added to a reform petition.    - agencies    1 November, 2003,    "Anger on Saudi Arabia's streets" by Roger Hardy. BBC Middle East analyst    It was a situation journalists sometimes find themselves in - you are suddenly in the middle of something unexpected, and you haven't the faintest idea what it is. I was trying to leave the capital Riyadh and catch a flight to Jeddah, but the car from the Ministry of Information got caught up in more than usually heavy traffic. As I looked out of the car window, it gradually dawned on me that something odd was happening.    There were police everywhere - and groups of sullen-looking young men. I watched them pick up a piece of wood and fling it into the road in front of a car that, like mine, was stuck in the traffic. It seemed like a small and futile act of defiance. But defiance of what - and why?    By now, the driver from the ministry was looking uncomfortable and glancing anxiously at his watch. At this rate we would miss the plane. After he had struggled with the traffic for a few more minutes, I finally asked him to turn round and go back to the hotel. He spoke nervously into his mobile phone, and reluctantly complied.    Calling for reform    It took me several hours to find out what had actually happened - and to discover I had been on the fringe of an unprecedented demonstration in the Saudi capital. By the time I got to the scene of the protest - an ultra-modern skyscraper known as the Kingdom Centre - it was evening and the crowds had gone, and the building itself stood cool and serene, bathed in ever-changing colours. Only a few police cars remained, keeping a watchful eye on the scene.    Eyewitnesses told me what had happened. Hundreds of Saudis had gathered near the Kingdom Centre that afternoon - perhaps as many as 500, they told me, though officials later spoke of half that number. They had called for political reform and the release of political prisoners. There had been men with beards chanting "God is great", a small number of women, and a lot of young people - or "shebab" as they are called in Arabic. Many of them, without doubt, unemployed young men with nothing else to do.    One Saudi told me Riyadh had never seen anything like it. The authorities were embarrassed that such a protest could occur in the heart of their capital - on the very day they were hosting the country's first human rights conference. And they were stung by the fact that the call for the demonstration had come from a Saudi dissident in London. I went back to the hotel and filed my piece. But for me at least, the day's drama was not over.    Hidden discontent    Later that night I walked back to the Kingdom Centre and the complex of shops and offices that surrounds it. After a while I found a taxi. Now I know you are always hearing journalists telling you what they have heard from taxi drivers, but this journey was something special. For one thing, it was a Saudi driver rather than the usual Pakistani or Bangladeshi ones you get in Saudi Arabia.    Did he know, I wondered, about the demonstration earlier that day? He did, but at first he was reluctant to talk about it. Then, gradually, he began to open up. As we drove past Debenhams, Harvey Nichols, and Marks & Spencers - yes, they really do have branches in Riyadh - my taxi driver scoffed.    You should see how real Saudis live, he said - and that is what we did.    He drove out of the centre of town and showed me the downbeat suburbs where poorer Saudis - many, like him, with large families - live side-by-side with the Filipinos and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who work in shops and wait at tables and clean the streets. The drab apartment blocks and rubbish-strewn streets were a world away from glitzy, downtown Riyadh.    Later that night, on the edge of the city, we passed the sprawling Al-Hamra housing compound, scene of co-ordinated suicide attacks in May which killed 35 people. The attacks jolted Saudis into realising that Osama Bin Laden's jihad had arrived in their own front yard.    And we passed a big fenced-off compound owned by one of the wealthy princes of the ruling family - the Ali Babas, as the taxi-driver called them sardonically. And I thought back to what I had heard a few days before from a Saudi businessman, a shrewd observer of his country's politics - and of the West. "You Westerners get it wrong," he told me. "You think what's going on here is all about religion and extremism. But that's a problem that can probably be solved.    The real issue - he said - was accountability. If the princes responded to pressures for change by democratising, they would end up losing their power and privileges. And that, he said, was why real reform - radical reform - just was not on the cards. Visit the related web page
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