day registration of aspiring members of the Kingdom's municipal councils ended Thursday with a total of 19,000 candidates hoping to attract the votes of some 1.2 million voters across their relevant constituencies. Al-Hayat Arabic daily reported that 90 percent of council members will not be running for re-election in the September polls. Omar Basoudan, a member of Riyadh municipal council, told Al-Hayat that he was not standing for re-election in order to “give new blood the chance to carry on the path of improving the municipality in Riyadh”. “The aspirations of the people have been partly achieved,” Basoudan said. “If the question concerns electoral campaign promises and the failure to see them through, then I would say that I made no promises but instead put forward a campaign program of visions and proposals, in the knowledge that the municipal council is not an executive body but a monitoring and legislative body.” Candidates are running in a total of 258 municipal councils which are composed of 1,232 seats, half of which are given to elected members.
