Saudi Arabia

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Municipal elections for 178 municipalities were held in Saudi Arabia between 10 February and 21 April 2005. The first to be held in the country since the 1960s, the elections were held in three stages: the first on 10 February around the capital city of Riyadh, the second in the east and southwest on 3 March, and the third, in the north, on 21 April.

The elections were part of the Saudi government's response to progressive movements calling for political reform.^[1]

Male citizens over the age of 21 voted for half of the members of their municipal councils. On 11 October 2004, Prince Naif bin Abd al-Aziz, the Saudi Interior Minister, announced to a Kuwaiti newspaper that women would not be able to run as candidates or vote in the elections: "I do not think that women's participation is possible." Elections officials noted logistical concerns, such as the lack of separate women's voting booths and the fact that many women do not have identification cards, as well as opposition from conservative religious traditionalists. However, the government promised that women would be able to vote in the 2009 elections. However, these were later indefinitely postponed.

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