Bahrain expects huge voter turnout after divisive election campaign
The Associated Press
Freewheeling campaigning for this island kingdom’s third-ever parliamentary election came to a close Friday, a day ahead of a historic vote being closely watched in neighboring Persian Gulf monarchies. Huge turnout is expected when polls open Saturday.
Campaigning has been fierce and dirty, with rally tents vandalized, allegations of secret government funding for favored candidates and torrents of text messages flooding mobile phones. Anonymous messages warn Sunni Muslims to back pro-government candidates against the Shiite Muslim-led opposition or face Iraq-style chaos.
Bahrain expects huge voter turnout after divisive election campaign
The Associated Press
Freewheeling campaigning for this island kingdom’s third-ever parliamentary election came to a close Friday, a day ahead of a historic vote being closely watched in neighboring Persian Gulf monarchies. Huge turnout is expected when polls open Saturday.
Campaigning has been fierce and dirty, with rally tents vandalized, allegations of secret government funding for favored candidates and torrents of text messages flooding mobile phones. Anonymous messages warn Sunni Muslims to back pro-government candidates against the Shiite Muslim-led opposition or face Iraq-style chaos.
“Wake up Sunnis!” reads one broadly distributed message. “Don’t be naive or your fate will be like the Iraqi Sunnis who lost their rights and their lives.”
With more than 200 Bahrainis vying for the National Assembly’s 40-seat lower house, many races on Friday appeared headed for a second-round runoff. Candidates from the country’s impoverished Shiite majority are expected to win a majority of seats, barring widespread fraud. The government has banned foreign election observers from monitoring the vote.
The Persian Gulf’s first-ever woman parliamentarian, 50-year-old Latifa al-Gaoud, is running uncontested and assured a seat. Bahrain and Kuwait are considered the most democratically advanced countries in the Gulf, where all six Arab monarchies have held or promised some sort of elections.
In Muharraq, a suburb of the capital Manama, rallies in gaily lit campaign tents raged deep into Thursday night, with supporters handing out smoky lamb kebabs and T-shirts emblazoned with Arabic slogans.
“It’s been very nasty,” said Aziz Abul, a liberal Sunni economist running as part of a slate of government opponents. “They have even attacked our wives for not wearing the veil. Many people think we are against Islam.”
The bewildering array of parties and candidates with wildly differing views has electrified this country of 700,000. About 60 percent are Shiite, but the government is dominated by a Sunni ruling family.
The spectrum ranges from hardline Sunni Islamists, including a jihadist party whose leader was briefly arrested for suspected ties to al-Qaida, to groups seeking Western-style social liberties in a country that hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
Buildings have been papered with campaign posters, some bearing the defaced faces of women candidates whose participation has triggered a backlash. Others have accused liberals of drinking alcohol or sexual immorality.
Bahrain political scientist Ali Fakhro worries the vote is deepening the already dangerous divide between Bahrain’s privileged Sunnis and downtrodden Shiites.
“We have Shiites standing for themselves and Sunnis standing for themselves,” Fakhro said. “We have tribal and familial allegiances. This division is worrying.”
Bahrain’s 80-seat parliament consists of an elected lower house and an upper chamber appointed by Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who controls most levers of power and can veto parliamentary legislation.
Still, Bahrain has seen a blossoming of social and political freedoms after the dark days of the 1990s, when Shiite unrest brought a bloody police clampdown. In 2002, King Hamad brought back parliamentary elections after a 26-year hiatus. Bahrain’s first-ever parliament was elected in 1973 but dissolved in 1975.
The 2002 elections were boycotted by the mainly Shiite opposition and resulted in a Sunni-dominated parliament stocked with conservative Muslims, including some with radical beliefs.
Those candidates are now fighting for their political lives against an array of Shiite and liberals who seek constitutional reforms, as well as jobs and housing for Bahrainis struggling under high levels of personal debt.
Supporters of the hardline Sunnis are widely believed to be behind several underhanded attempts to sway the vote, and opponents accuse them of succumbing to influence of Saudi funding and ideology.
Fears of meddling have been stoked by revelations of an alleged secret government mission to aid Sunni candidates through bribes and religious conversions, as well as a recent rash of handouts of Bahraini citizenship to Pakistani, Syrian and Indian immigrants in return for their support.
The Shiite bloc, meanwhile, is accused of taking support from Iran. Those accusations have been bolstered by statements from foreign Shiite leaders, including a fatwa from Iraqi supreme leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that ordered Bahraini Shiites to vote.
Shiite rallies have feted their sectarian brethren in Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iraq’s Shiite militias. Placards of Iraqi firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr are common.
Analysts expect a 70 percent turnout, far larger than the boycott-marred 53 percent turnout in 2002
