You probably haven’t heard as much about the upcoming elections in Saudi Arabia as you did about elections in some other nearby countries (it was news to me). But this is a fairly big deal: the elections, which begin next Thursday, are only for municipal authorities, but based on the reports I found they’re still the first country-wide elections ever held in Saudi Arabia, and the first elections of any kind held in decades.
Sadly, after early steps by the government left open the possibility that women would be able to vote and maybe even run as candidates, the government’s final decision was that women will be barred. The official reason given was that there wasn’t time to work out the logistics, but in light of the fact that the elections were rescheduled more than once resulting in a delay of several months (as well as the fact that they’re saying they might not be able to work it out in time for the next elections scheduled for 2009), it seems likely that other forces drove the decision.
And in other news from Saudi Arabia, the international counterterrorism conference currently ongoing in Riyadh has delegates from 50 countries, including some fairly high-level folks from the US. Iran, Syria, and Sudan are all in attendance (the whole guest list is here). In fact, according to the host, "We have invited all countries that have suffered from terrorism to the conference, and all have agreed to take part." Well … not quite all countries — Israel, perhaps the country in the world that has experienced the most terrorist attacks, was not invited. Our right-wing friends over at Powerline have this interesting exchange between the Saudi embassy and someone who emailed them about Israel’s exclusion.
To sum up: elections (good) in which women can’t vote, much less run (bad). And an international counterterrorism conference (good) from which Israel is excluded (bad, IMHO). I’d say we’re receiving mixed messages, at best, from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was nice to hear Bush in the State of the Union urge the Saudis to get on the freedom train. Let’s hope that his commitment to that goal has a longer half-life than, say, his commitment to going to Mars.
UPDATE (Feb. 7): Today’s Daou report points to a video clip of the Saudi defense minister opining that Osama bin Laden was "sent by the Jews." Well, I guess that explains why Israel wasn’t invited to the counterterrorism conference. You can view the clip (with English subtitles) here, at MEMRI TV’s website.
