The General Committee for Municipal Elections has licensed 12 media establishments so far to organize and run the election campaigns, which are due to start Sunday and will continue for a period of 11 days. Out of the 12 licensed establishments, seven are in Al-Ahsa Governorate, three in Makkah region, one in Qassim region and one company has been licensed for all the other regions. No establishment has been licensed so far to run election campaigns in large regions and cities such as Riyadh, Madina, Northern Frontier, Jizan, Najran, Al-Baha and a few others. “Licenses for media establishments are still being granted. We expect the number of granted licenses to rise in the next few days,” said Engineer Judai Al-Qahtani, spokesman the General Committee for Municipal Elections. If a candidate wishes to organize and run his election campaign, he has to sign a contract with a licensed media establishment, Al-Qahtani said, adding that those who sign contracts with unlicensed media establishments will have their applications rejected. The committee will announce Saturday the final lists of candidates, and they will be allowed to launch their election campaigns from the day after. __
