Saudi king allows women to vote in local elections. Unfortuantely, there are a few conditions: 1. They must be allowed to actually leave their home. 2. Once allowed to leave, they still cannot drive. 3. They can’t run for office. 4. If the voting booth is on the male side of the street, they’re SOL. But other than that, Let Freedom Ring!
This post was last modified on January 26, 2021
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Yes, the law now says that women can vote. But if none of the men in their family will escort them to the polling booth, they can't vote anyway. And no self-respecting Saudi man would ever escort his sister, daughter, or wife to the voting booth. Next they'll be wanting to walk around on their own, showing their faces, hair, or even ankles.
Great. Next step: Stop treating Christians and (non-Muslims) like third class citizens, stop putting them in prison for their thoughts and beliefs and stop executing women for adultery while letting the men go. Go ahead I can wait for another two thousand years to see this happen.
Where is Olivia to tell us why this is all a good thing, that we in the west should embrace and support, since Islam is the best religion on the planet?
I forsee a special "women only" voting booth, which they enter, but are never heard from again. A trap door in the booth sends them to the kings harem.
I believe this has something to do with a current battle being waged in Canada.
A major Canadian TV network has caved to pressure from the Saudi government to stop running ads that criticize the Saudi's human rights record, more specifically how they treat women. The network is owned by Bell Canada, who (coincidentally, I'm sure) has done a lot of work in Saudi Arabia.
Well, this has caused quite a carfuffle. Their attempt to interfere in Canada's affairs is on the verge of becoming a diplomatic "incident". Maybe this is an attempt to diffuse this situation? I wonder ....
Its a good step. Female activists have been quite brave there lately
Why do I get the feeling it is all a show?
I'll believe it more when they allow them to drive. I used to work for someone like that. He said the reason that he never gave out bonuses was because none of his employees ever came up with a plan. I have had experience in developing that sort of compensation, and so I came up with several reasonable plans all directly tied to increased profitability. Every one was shot down entirely. There was no "this part is good, but I don't like that part", or "the numbers need to be bigger". After four or five times, I realized (slow learner, that's me!) that what he meant to say was that he was way too tight to ever give out a bonus, even if he made millions in the process -- but that he wanted to blame this on his employees.
The Saudis probably will 'allow' women to vote, but the saudi women will never seem to be able to make it to the polls. A few elections later, they'll go "See? They won't vote anyway, so we need to take it away from them." Either that, or their votes will be tallied separately, and used more to identify people of interest to the Saudi police. Allowing them to drive is much more difficult to do -- even if they could drive safely with the penguin suit on.
Despots will always think like despots. If there's anything I've learned from people like that, I've learned that they will use literally anything to get ahead -- but the minute the world turns its head, the chains come right back out. You don't even have to know how they will use it for evil -- it's always wiser to simply assume that they will.
Reminds me a little of the "The Old Man and the Lisa" Simpsons episode -- Mr. Burns takes on a (supposedly) laudable business of recycling, but he's so thoroughly steeped in evil that he can't even be good without doing massive evil.
Its a big damn show, if that. Your prognostications may be correct, and we'll get to see how it turns out. My original take on the headline (which also included mention that women could run for political office) involved complete shock, and immediate thoughts about months of these female Driving Protests, and a power structure terrified of the Arab Spring. This may seem like a relatively harmless way to make what appears to be a huge concession--after all, by our standards, Saudi womenfolk are likely still brutally fundamentalist & muslim. But this is better news then some further tightening of screws on a battered populace (ala Syria)
Wow, how tolerant of them. Bet there's a separate booth for women to vote in. Bet that booth is attached to nothing. What's next? Allowing Jews to visit?
Sounds a lot like the process whereby David Brooks was picked as the token pretend conservative on the NY Liberal Times.