Conservatives Dominate Saudi Council Elections

The monarchy’s limited 10-week experiment with elections ended Saturday in a sweeping victory for candidates backed by conservative Sunni Muslim clerics who used grass-roots organizing and digital technology to defeat their liberal and tribal rivals.

In Saudi Arabia’s commercial capital, Jidda, the seven winning candidates were those whose names appeared on the “Golden List” -- the picks of fundamentalist clerics.

Five of the six winners in Buraydah, capital of conservative Qasim province, received a clerical nod as well, and the holy city of Medina also saw Islamist candidates finishing well.

Candidates from the kingdom’s Shiite Muslim minority did well in some of their eastern strongholds and a few independents were elected along the Red Sea coast, but most winners were those backed by the Sunni clerics.

The first round of voting was held Feb. 10.

The staggered contests for seats on half of the kingdom’s 178 municipal councils are the first governmental elections here in more than three decades. The process has offered a rare measure of public opinion and political strength across Saudi Arabia -- or at least the opinions of men, since women were barred from voting or running as candidates, as were active soldiers and police.

As the last ballots were being counted, voters, candidates and Saudi analysts in relatively open-minded Jidda debated the meaning of the broad Islamic victory, divided over whether the winners should be viewed as pragmatic moderates or radicals, and whether the result signaled that the kingdom should fear democracy or embrace it more speedily.

“It’s the first time -- everyone is sitting and waiting to see who these seven are and what they will do,” said Issan Mulla, 43, an architect who voted in Jidda. “Saudi Arabians don’t want the change to be fast. The first time telephones and TV came to Saudi Arabia, the people rejected them. After some time, they came to accept.”

Democracy will follow a similar course, he said.

Public debate about such questions is rare in a country where political parties are banned and three imprisoned intellectuals face trial for advocating a written constitution, and where the ruling Saud family and its allies in the official religious establishment have dominated civic discourse since the 1930s.

In the Jidda election, the Golden List initially surfaced as anonymous text messages sent to thousands of cellphones, seven names out of the more than 500 candidates competing for the council. The spammed messages were sometimes accompanied by a short religious homily or endorsement.

The origins and management of the Golden List remain a mystery. The candidates chosen by the list’s architects were mainly well-credentialed professionals, some educated in the U.S., who have long records of religious and social activism, according to their websites, rival candidates and Saudi journalists.

They ran on platforms that emphasized local issues such as roads and public facilities, but they also made it clear that on social issues such as gender segregation, education and enforcement of religious rules, they supported the kingdom’s austere traditions.

The winners must share power with an equal number of government-appointed council members, and it is not clear whether they will have much real authority.