Interview in: junge Welt, 11/2/05

A conversation with Tobias Pflüger

On Thursday, there took place the first local elections in Saudi Arabia in the history of the country. Saudi Arabia does not exactly have the reputation of being democratic – what significance do these elections have?

It is a first step that a vote was allowed to take place at all. Nonetheless, these elections have two gigantic beauty marks. First of all, only men are allowed to vote, women may not participate. Second, only 25% of all those eligible to vote have registered for these elections at all. One can thus not speak of democratic elections at all.

What is the resonance of the population to these first elections?

It differs. We were a delegation of the European Parliament after all, invited by the Saudi Parliament. From the point of view of the visitors’ schedule, it was not easy to get in touch with the normal population. However, we have gone out and have asked the people on the streets, how they relate to these elections. Some said that they did not feel concerned at all, others said they welcomed that a first step had been made on this way. However, I myself have hit upon a surprise in this context: many of those, to whom I spoke were not all eligible to vote: Saudi Arabia has 16.5 million citizens and 6.1 million people of other nationalities, who were not entitled to vote.

How does one have to imagine the electoral campaign in the desert?

The local elections took place in the capital of Riad and in the second-largest city of Yeddah. Public buildings are not available for the campaign, the candidates had thus built up tents for their electoral meetings. We looked at them – in one of these tents, there was a discussion, for instance, of communal possibilities of influence on the formalities of concluding a marriage, about taxing the marriage partners etc. But great care is taken that, during the electoral campaign, only local topics and none of a general political nature can be discussed.

What can local parliaments decide at all in Saudi Arabia?

That we have also tried to find out. In Riad, for instance, there live several million people, there are questions there, such as the construction on empty building lots, the ownership of buildings etc. We have not received a clear description of the competence of the local parliaments – we have only been given examples.

Do you see a sign in the communal elections that something in Saudi Arabia is starting to change in favour of human rights?

The acting EU ambassador, from the Netherlands, has formulated it very clearly: Normal human rights are being withheld from the non-Saudi citizens. One had to spontaneously think of the notion of “slavery”, even if the notion is not altogether apt. One has to judge the human rights situation thus as rather miserable; the elections won’t change a lot at that.

Did you also have conversations with Saudi politicians?

We have discussed with deputies of the Saudi parliament, among other things, the case of terrorism. That ran almost like a ping-pong game, with reproaches from both sides. When I asked, whether the phenomenon of terrorism did not have to do with the policy of the Western states and also that of Saudi Arabia, there only ruled silence on all sides.

Did it come up that most of the alleged perpetrators of 11th September 2001 had Saudi passports?

The answer to that was: And where did they get prepared? In the EU, more concretely in Hamburg. It is, in their opinion, our problem that we let such people pass our borders. This is an example of the above-mentioned ping-pong game. Everybody pushes the responsibility for terrorism to the other – but nobody asks the question, why there is terrorism at all. I felt like someone, who observes two worlds, which are certainly very similar, but which do not want to understand one another.

Interview: Peter Wolter

Translated by Carla Krüger, 12/2/05