Saudi women ‘get the vote’ - but will it really happen?

NEWS that Saudi women will soon be able to vote in municipal council elections and join the political advisory body known as the Shura Council has been welcomed by most commentators, but is it too soon to celebrate? The municipal councils have very little power, while the Shura Council, an influential political adviser to the king similar to a parliament, has no legislative power. And even King Abdullah’s promised vote could still be scuppered by bureaucracy.
 
Reform slow but significant
Conservative Saudi Arabia has been inching toward reform under King Abdullah, says Emily Buchanan on BBC News. About 10 years ago the king said women should be central to the Saudi economy. Since then, “change has been gradual for fear of a religious backlash”. Now, allowing women to stand and vote in municipal elections is “a big step towards political reform”.
 
If anything, the announcement suggests that the ailing 87-year-old king seeks a legacy as a reformer, despite making only modest inroads on human rights, says Jeffrey Fleishman in the Los Angeles Times. The change will not alter the Saudi power structure. But “even a little nudge forward in the kingdom is significant”.
 
Saudis troubled by Arab Spring
There’s no question that this is a hugely significant development in a country in which women have faced some of the most draconian conditions anywhere in the world, says Jon Snow on his Channel 4 blog. Women still aren’t allowed to drive, but nevertheless the vote is a “palpable break-through” and “may signal the scale of female restiveness in the tensions that have affected Saudi Arabia” in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
 
Lots of promises, little change
Let’s wait and see, says Nesrine Malik in the Guardian. There is a pattern in Saudi Arabia in which promises and expressions of goodwill are often “scuppered due to bureaucracy”. There is no law preventing women from driving in the country, for example, but bureaucratic stalling makes it impossible for them to get a driving licence or register to drive.
 
Similarly, women may have been granted the vote, but must wait until 2015, we are told, because separate polling stations for men and women remain a problem. While it is encouraging that for first time, the king has made an overt promise regarding women's participation in politics, there remains a concern that the old pattern will continue – “women's rights appear to have been granted in principle but never in practice”. ·