Agence France-Presse. Riyadh
Saudi King Abdullah on Sunday granted women the right to vote, and run in local elections, in a historic first for the ultra-conservative country where women are subjected to by many restrictions.
"Starting with the next term, women will have the right, at the local elections run and the candidates according to Islamic principles, choose," he said in speech
Life on State television broadcast in the Shura Council.
Women's rights activists have long fought for the right to vote in the Gulf Kingdom which applies a strict version of Sunni Islam and prohibits women from driving, or without the consent of the male guardian travel.
Manal al-Sharif, a 32-year-old computer security consultant, was arrested on 22 may have been and 10 days after posting on YouTube a video of themselves driving around the eastern city of Khobar, said the King decision as "a historic and courageous."
"The King is a reformer," she said of the 86-year-old monarch, whose Land was spared a wave of protests rocking the region with the autocratic regime in Tunisia and Egypt were overthrown.
The King decision means that women take part in the elections, which take place in four years, as the next vote will be held on Thursday and nominations are already closed.
In addition to participate in the only public surveys in the country, women had the right to all appointed Shura (consultative) Council join the, he said the new term in the address the Assembly.
'We have decided that women will take part as members in the next legislature in the Shura Council,' said the King in the unexpected movement, enfranchise women.
More than 5,000 men compete in local elections on Thursday, only the second in the history of Saudi Arabia, 285 local councils to fill half of the seats in the Kingdom. Appointed the other half by the Government.
The first elections were held in 2005, but the Government extended the existing Council term for two years.
King Abdullah said his decision came because we refuse marginalization of the role of women in Saudi society in all areas and followed by 'Consultations with various scholars.'
He mentioned not about women's right to go where they need to hire male drivers, or depend on the good will of the related if they do not have the resources in the Kingdom.
However, he said that ' balanced modernization, committed with our Islamic values are a necessary demand is in an era where there no place for those who hesitate ' in moving forward.
Saudi Arabia has seen many changes because Abdullah King was in 2005.
Norah al-Fayez, who was named to the post of Deputy Minister of education for women's education in 2009, was the first woman ever named a Minister in the country.
She called over 60 intellectual and activist women exclude in may for a boycott of the round September because 'local councils the authority to carry out its role effectively is missing' and 'half of its members are appointed", than also because.
The Shura Council had recommended that women in the next local polls to vote, officials said.
In April, Samar Badawi said they Municipal Affairs Ministry of defence, the ban on women, the participation of the local poll was sued.
A complaint to the administrative court in Mecca against the Ministry of women's right as voters handed Badawi registered.
Also in April, a group of women defied the ban on women in the elections of at a registration voters in the Red Sea in Jeddah in a rare public demonstration against the male emerges only electoral system.
But they were that turned back, the head of the Center, who said were still banned them women from the vote.
The oil-rich Kingdom of Sunni has place however seen smaller sporadic demonstrations by Shiites, which took in the Eastern province.
Sahrif was the symbol of a campaign by a group of defiantly Saudi women behind the wheels of their cars drive on 17 June in calls to the nationwide action against the ban, have.
The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has publicly thrown their support behind the campaign, say that "what do these women, is brave, and what they are looking for is true."
' The Saudi woman, will for the first time, you become a partner in the decision-making process. I hope, it gets assigned as Minister ", said Sharif.
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| Source: newagebd.com
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