Saudi Elections

Results of Saudi Arabia's first governmental elections in thirty years are in:

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia, April 23 -- Saudi Arabia's limited 10-week experiment with electoral democracy ended here Saturday in a sweeping victory for slates of Islamic activists marketed as the "Golden List," who used grass-roots organizing, digital technology and endorsements from popular religious leaders to defeat their liberal and tribal rivals, even here in Jiddah, for decades Saudi Arabia's most diverse and business-driven city.

Women, active soldiers, and police were barred from voting or running as candidates.

Even as the last ballots were being counted, voters, candidates and Saudi analysts in relatively open-minded Jiddah 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 sooner.

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

In the Jiddah election, the Golden List of religiously approved candidates surfaced initially as anonymously dispatched text messages on thousands of cell phones, seven names out of the more than 500 candidates competing for the Jiddah council. The spammed messages were sometimes accompanied by a religious homily or endorsement.

The candidates were then backed in speeches and media interviews by religious scholars, including some well-known preachers who speak mainly about personal improvement, as well as dissidents such as Safar Hawali, who was jailed in the mid-1990s for anti-government preaching and who has spoken often about the virtues of armed jihad.