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Sunday, November 29, 2015

Saudi women candidates launch their first ever election campaigns Sunday Nov 29,2015

In a step forward for women’s rights in the conservative kingdom’s slow reform process, the Saudi women began their first-ever campaigns for public office on Sunday Nov 29,2015

More than 900 women are standing in the Dec12,2015 municipal elections, which will also mark the first time women are allowed to vote.

Ruled by King Salman, oil-rich Saudi Arabia has no elected legislature but has faced intense Western scrutiny over its rights record. 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.

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.

Although the voting age has been lowered to 18 from 21 and the proportion of elected council members has increased to two-thirds, winning a seat remains a challenge for women in an electorate where male voters vastly outnumber them

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