CAMEL'S NOSE:

Saudi candidates learn politics: The Progressives, a new political party, work the phones ahead of country's first-ever vote Feb. 10. (Faiza Saleh Ambah, 1/12/05, CS Monitor)

The polls are intended to fill half the seats in 178 municipal councils spread out across the country. The other council members will be appointed by the government. In Riyadh, where registration for the three-stage polls started in November, turnout has been low. Voter registration ended with only 150,000 of an eligible 600,000 voters registered.

Ultraconservative Islamists see the election as an undesirable imported Western concept, while many liberals are boycotting the elections in protest over the limited scope of reform they represent. But Mansour al-Bakr, a landscape architect who heads the Progressives' support committee and provides the group with meeting space, says participation is necessary.

"We've been asking for reforms for years. If we don't participate in these elections, however minor they are, the government will think all our demands were just blah blah blah," he says.

Mr. Bakr spends his evenings on the phone persuading nephews and friends to register. He writes surveys to hand out to potential voters, asking what they're looking for in their candidates, and has compiled a list of more than 1,500 registered voters who the group will try to get to the polls in February.

It's worth all the hard work, he says, because the success of these elections is crucial for those who seek greater political participation. "It will encourage the government to open other avenues for elections, like the Shura [appointed council that advises the royal cabinet]," says Bakr.

However meager a beginning, even this is a step that was considered impossible pre-9/11.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 11, 2005 6:07 PM