HIT THE GROUND CRAWLING:

Saudis Gingerly Experiment With Democracy: Nationwide voting, for men only, will decide half the seats of local councils. But it's a start. (Megan K. Stack, February 10, 2005, LA Times)

With ballots still being counted from last month's Iraqi election, this vote has been touted by Saudi, American and British officials as another important stroke of reform in the Middle East. Yet the polling in Saudi Arabia is both progressive and retrograde. It is evidence of a slight political opening, but also a reminder of just how deeply undemocratic this region remains.

Only half the seats on the councils will be decided by elections; the other half will be picked by the ruling House of Saud. Women can't vote or run as candidates. Some women are hoping the royal family will at least appoint some female council members, but there's no word on whether that will happen.

"We don't take it seriously. It's a joke," said Hatoon Ajwad Fassi, a woman who teaches history at Riyadh's King Saud University. "It's too bad they're not aware of the loss the country is suffering by not having women participate."

In this particular campaign tent, supporters of candidate Abdulaziz Alomary fretted that he'd done himself grave political damage by allowing a female journalist to visit.

Others barred from voting include members of the military and expatriates; the legal voting age is 21. Registration has been sluggish, with many voters skeptical, others openly scornful. The councils are a new concept in Saudi Arabia, and whether they will have significant authority, or be effective, remains a mystery.

Still, if Saudis are tepid about the prospect of casting ballots, they are tripping over one another to run for office. In Riyadh alone, almost 1,800 candidates are competing for 127 positions.

"This is the first body elected by the people, and we hope [the government] will give it some power," said Alomary, a real estate developer and an Islamic history professor. "They can control it anyway, because half of them will be appointed."

Saudis are unsure whether the vote is the beginning of reforms or an empty gesture meant to ease pressure from Western governments and domestic advocates of democracy. The puzzle is part of a wider confusion about political change — and the American role in it — in wake of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

U.S. officials have hailed the election in Iraq and called for greater democracy elsewhere in the Arab world. President Bush, in his State of the Union speech last week, gently prodded the Saudi royal family to "demonstrate its leadership … by expanding the role of its people in determining their future." Egypt, he said, should "now show the way toward democracy in the Middle East."

But many Arabs are cynical about U.S. intentions. They are keenly aware that the United States is closely allied with the House of Saud and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who is expected to win a fifth term this year by running as the sole candidate in a referendum in which the choices are "yes" or "no."

Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political scientist and TV talk show host from the United Arab Emirates, cheered what he called "the spring of elections" — a wave of voting in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt.

"If even one Arab is allowed in his own free conscience to go and exercise his right to vote, that's a victory for democracy," he said in a recent interview. But like many Arabs, he doesn't believe that the U.S. has any intention of promoting a true democratic overhaul of the region.

"America talks about political reform in Egypt, yet it wants Hosni Mubarak to be in power to pursue Mideast peace. It talks about reform in Saudi Arabia, yet it wants the royal family in place to preserve its oil interests," Abdulla said. "There is an inherent contradiction when this administration talks about democracy and freedom in this region. People are not dumb, and the contradiction they see is just too stark."

They didn't think we were serious about democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq or Palestine either.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 10, 2005 8:19 AM