NEWS
Quick Access
Women lose in polls for Saudi chamber
(AP)

24 February 2006
DUBAI — Voters rejected all six women candidates in a chamber of commerce election in eastern Saudi Arabia, according to preliminary results released yesterday.

The polls for the Eastern Province Chamber of Commerce and Industry were only the second time in Saudi history that women have run for elected office. Women and men are strictly segregated in the conservative kingdom, and women were not allowed to vote in the country’s first nationwide municipal polls last year.

“We lost, but we’re not that unhappy about it,” one of the female candidates, Samia Al Edrisi, told AP in a phone interview from Dammam.

“We were mainly hoping to make a good showing,” she said, adding that she polled first among the women candidates with around 438 ballots. The chamber’s web site gave the names of the 12 winners yesterday. All were men and each got at least 1,500 votes. The top candidate, Ma’an Abdul Wahed Abdul Majeed Al Sanae, took 2,536 votes. Al Edrisi said she expected Commerce Minister Hashem Yamani to appoint at least one women to the chamber’s board. Yamani has to select a further six board members. The election pit Al Edrisi, a 55-year-old clothing importer, and five other women against 40 men in the election of 12 members of the chamber, which is based in the Saudi oil capital of Dammam.

Have your say
OTHER STORIES
  Yemen rebels say S.Arabia steps up air attacks
  Pilot error behind Ethiopian jet crash
  Iran jails senior reformer for five years
  Saudi court upholds jail verdict against sex braggart
  Iraq to open 10-15 polling stations in Jordan
  Banned Iraqi poll candidates’ appeals rejected
+ MORE STORIES

Khaleej Times on Facebook
Khaleej Times Services
© 2010 Khaleej Times, All rights reserved