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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 March 1999 Issue No. 420 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 March 1999 Issue No. 420
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Special Features Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Democracy road?
QATAR took a first step along a possible road of parliamentary democracy by holding its first ever municipal election this week. Yet, while the vote was free of charges of government interference, Qatari women failed to win a single seat.
Young businessmen and civil servants turned out to be the big winners in Monday's polls for the National Council, while six women candidates, most of them university academics, fell by the wayside.
Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad ibn Khalifa Al-Thani, and his wife, Sheikha Moza Al-Mesned, had both called for Qatari women to make the most of their chances to vote -- a first for women in the entire oil-rich Gulf region. Almost 22,000 voters, nearly 10,000 of them women, were called to the polls out of an estimated 100,000 Qataris.
Although Qatari women candidates did not complain of any rigging, they charged that women voters came under pressure from male relatives to vote for men to fill the 29-seat council.
The council itself has no real power. Officially, it will "supervise implementation of laws and resolutions concerning the ministry of municipal and agricultural affairs." But overall, observers viewed the voting as a positive development in the Gulf region where there are no elected parliaments except in Kuwait. But even in Kuwait, women are not allowed to vote or to run as candidates. Women candidates in Qatar said they had gained from the experience, ahead of the introduction of parliamentary elections some time in the near future as promised by Qatar's emir. (photo: AFP)
