During the first municipal elections in 2005, the Kingdom was assisted by experts from the US, Europe, some Arab countries and the UN who helped with preparations, but this year elections throughout the Kingdom were administered by 16,000 well-trained Saudis, said Prince Mansour Bin Mit'eb Bin Abdul Aziz, Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs. In 2005, Saudis gained experience in the preparation, implementation and management of the election process; this year, they put that experience to good use and will continue to do so in upcoming elections, he said Thursday during a tour of Al-Draiah Camp in Riyadh to check on the voting process. Prince Mansour thanked King Abdullah for allowing women to participate in municipal council elections as voters and candidates, beginning with those to be held in 2015. “This will be a positive development and a plus for municipal council elections,” he said. “We are implementing the directives of the ruler and we seek to please Allah, the ruler and citizens.” Ministry officials have forwarded the new system for municipal councils to the King and it is now being studied in the Shoura Council, Prince Mansour said. Following its approval, the system will be a qualitative and positive change that will make the elected bodies more effective, he added. In their efforts to improve the work and role of the municipal councils, ministry officials study and benefit from observations made by the ministry and election workers, members of the public and the media, Prince Mansour said. Addressing some citizens' dissatisfaction with the performance of the municipal councils elected in 2005, he said that among the 270 councils, there are some that are excellent, others are average and some are ineffective; as such, people should not generalize after evaluating one example or a small number of them. Many issues such as education and health matters that some citizens wanted councils to address are not under their jurisdiction and many people do not have a clear understanding of the concept of municipal councils, Prince Mansour pointed out. In the Kingdom, cities are not run only by municipal councils, but by a number of authorities; what concerns the municipal sector in city management is in the range of 40 percent to 60 percent of city governance and other sectors are responsible for the rest, he said. There has been strong progress in improving the election process and officials are working to ensure that the positive developments continue, Prince Mansour said. “What was achieved in the first elections in 2005 was positive and led to greater effectiveness,” he said. “We consider development to be a continuous process. Evaluation ought to be objective and further development should be based on the evaluation of what has transpired.”
