RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Khalid Agami, a jocular Saudi man with a wispy beard and wire-rimmed spectacles, has variously been professor, prisoner, father and grandfather during his 57 years. Now he has become something entirely new -- a candidate.
Agami is running for office in November as part of a cautious experiment by the Saudi royal family. For the first time in 41 years, it is allowing elections, local ones, that will fill half the seats on 178 municipal councils.
Khalid Agami, 57, is running for a seat on the municipal council of Hail, an agricultural town about 500 miles northwest of Riyadh.
(Scott Wilson -- Washington Post)
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The ruling family's goal, political analysts and diplomats here say, is to determine whether a more open government might help defuse a rising armed threat by Muslim militants in the kingdom or merely inspire reform advocates to push harder against the princes' long hold on power.
A pious Muslim from the low mountains of northern Saudi Arabia, Agami has set his sights on one of a dozen seats on the municipal council of Hail, an agricultural town about 500 miles northwest of the capital, Riyadh. He said he was imprisoned in the 1990s for calling on the government to adopt human rights standards, a demand he intends to make part of his campaign. He will also push for an anti-corruption program and more money from the central government for local water and public health projects.
His slogan -- "The Honest and the Strong Man" -- is taken from the Koran.
"There will be limits placed on what I will be allowed to say, but I think they will be reasonable," said Agami, a professor of Arabic studies at Riyadh's Imam Mohammed bin Saud Islamic University. "I am asking people to be positive about me, and I think so far I have made a good impression."
In a country that takes even its name from the ruling family, few institutions are more foreign than electoral politics. But now nascent campaigns for the municipal seats are injecting a small but spicy dose of democracy into a hermetic political life in which power has long been rooted in tribal alliances and proximity to royalty.
By opening only half the council seats for election -- the other half will remain appointed by the royal family -- the government will be able to judge which candidates fared well and with what message. That analysis, political commentators and Western diplomats here say, will determine whether elections will be held for the rest of the council seats, and then expanded to include regional governments and eventually a national parliament to replace one that is now also filled by royal family appointment.
Women, who have yet to gain the right to drive, business leaders and Muslim dissidents are discussing issues ranging from the need for political reform to the shortage of youth centers in a country where more than half of the 25 million people are younger than 18. Many of the candidates are putting up big money to win, and several public relations firms are signing up clients and viewing democracy as a growth industry.
"We are moving to a new relationship between citizens and government," said Abdulaziz Alsebail, a professor of modern Arabic literature at King Saud University in Riyadh and a member of country's democratic reform movement. "This is our first lesson in elections."
The U.N.-supervised balloting, scheduled to unfold in three phases ending early next year, would be the first on a national scale in Saudi Arabia's 72-year history. The last elections, in 1963, took place only in the western region of Hijaz, home to Islam's two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina.
Although elections have been technically authorized since 1977, the upcoming vote was called only this year by a government that is under pressure from the Bush administration and international human rights organizations to democratize its political system. Many official campaign regulations have yet to be established, leaving open practical questions about what the exact powers of the municipal councils will be, who will have the right to vote and compete in the elections, and how candidates will be allowed to advertise.
A bylaw issued this year allows all Saudis 21 and older to cast ballots, except those serving in the security forces. Women were not specifically excluded, and many of them are proceeding as if they won't be.
For several weeks, Hatoon Fassi has led an all-female group whose goals are revolutionary by the standards of the kingdom: promoting the right of women to participate in every aspect of the elections.
