These are uncontested elections. Six candidates, including a woman, were elected MPs in a first phase of parliamentary elections in Bahrain and 34 seats remain to be filled in a second vote next Saturday, authorities announced on Sunday. About 350,000 voters are registered in the kingdom, which has 1.4 million inhabitants.
Voters voted to renew the lower house of parliament on Saturday, in an election where the opposition was barred from contesting. According to the authorities, the turnout reached 73%, the “highest rate in the history of the kingdom”.
calls for a boycott
A record 330 candidates, including 73 women, contested the 40 seats in the lower house of parliament, which advises King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa, in power since his father’s death in 1999. The absence representatives of the two main opposition groups, Al-Wefaq (Shiite) and Waad (secular), banned by the government in 2016 and 2017, had however prompted calls for a boycott.
A key ally of the United States in the region, Bahrain was rocked by unrest in 2011, when security forces suppressed protests led in particular by Shiite parties demanding a constitutional monarchy. The ruling family is from the Sunni community. Bahrain, whose capital Manama hosts the US Fifth Fleet and a British base, regularly accuses Shiite Iran of being behind unrest in the kingdom, which Tehran denies.
Government brushes aside criticism of Amnesty International
Amnesty International said ahead of the elections that they were taking place in “an environment of political repression”. A government spokesman dismissed those criticisms on Saturday. “The conditions (to present) impose not having a criminal past and not belonging to a dissolved society after having been involved in acts of violence contravening a legal political activity”, he had underlined.