More than 900 Saudi women to stand in elections

Women voters say they will cast their ballots for female candidates.

RIYADH // Saudi women began their first-ever campaigns for public office on Sunday, in a step forward for women’s rights in the conservative kingdom’s slow reform process.

More than 900 women are standing in the December 12 municipal elections, which will also mark the first time women are allowed to vote.

The country’s first municipal elections were held in 2005, followed by another vote in 2011, but in both cases only men were allowed to participate.

“We will vote for the women even though we don’t know anything about them,” Um Fawaz, a teacher in her 20s, said in Hafr Al Batin city.

“It’s enough that they are women,” she said.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are not allowed to drive.

The late King Abdullah introduced the elections in 2005 and said women would participate in this year’s vote. In 2013, he also named women to the appointed Shura Council, which advises the cabinet.

King Abdullah died in January and was succeeded by King Salman, who stuck to the election timetable.

In other Gulf states, women have had some voting rights for several years.

About 7,000 people are vying for seats on 284 municipal councils in the vote, the Saudi electoral commission says.

Only around 131,000 women have signed up to vote, compared with more than 1.35 million men, out of a native Saudi population of almost 21 million.

* Agence France-Presse