Democracy stirs in the Arab world

In Saudi Arabia, though its elections will be its first of any kind since the 1960s, they are for largely ceremonial municipal councils and, in practice, won't yield much authority to elected representatives. The Saudi monarchy will remain caught between Islamist clerics who want even more stringent Islamic law and more influence for themselves and the broader mass of Saudi citizens, who would like more input into how their country is run and how its massive oil revenues are spent.

"This government does not want reform and cannot reform even if there is some interest in reform,'' charges Saad al-Faqih, a dissident Saudi exile and political activist who called for rare public protests in two Saudi cities Thursday. "The reason is they know that real reform will be the first step towards bringing them down, Once they allow free expression and freedom of assembly, they'll start to lose control."

The elections will only be for half the members of the municipal councils, which have some control over community health and trash collection, with the other half of the bodies remaining appointed.

"The election is significant within the context in Saudi Arabia - they have to start somewhere,'' says Amy Hawthorne, who focuses on domestic Arab politics for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "But they're holding the elections in stages so the process can be halted at any time if it doesn't go well. The vetting process is very strict, and only half of the councils members are elected, so it is nothing close to a solution to the problems that Saudi Arabia is facing," she says.

Ms. Hawthorne says it can be misleading to lump all three elections together "because the contexts and conditions are different" but agrees that in all three cases elections "are not the be-all and end-all."

She's most enthusiastic about the process under way among the Palestinians, who are ironically further on the path to building stable institutions than Saudi Arabia and Iraq, despite not formally having a state of their own yet. While hard-liners like Hamas - or on the Israeli side - could still scuttle attempts at peace, she says the transition since the death of Yasser Arafat has been smooth.

"If [Abbas] is elected, whatever vision he has, is going to be very difficult to achieve given the large amount of uncertainty,'' she says. "But they have a historical anchor for the process of holding a competitive election and there have been people pushing for more reform, and for more open government for a long time now."

Hamed of al-Risala underscores the challenges to Abbas's vision for taking the gun out of Palestinian politics. Hamas will stop its attacks only if Israel guarantees it will stop incursions, assassinations, and home demolitions in the occupied territories, he says. "If Israeli troops continue with these actions Abbas will not be able to convince Hamas and other groups," he says.

Even if he nails down a cease-fire, Abbas's ability to show Palestinians improvements in their day to day lives will also depend on Israeli policy, say observers, as will his ability to wrest territorial concessions at the negotiating table with Israel.

It is in Iraq, note analysts, that the risks are highest, particularly for the US since the elections result from an American intervention and are a key element in the Bush administration's foreign policy. If things go well, they could prompt more reform in the Middle East, but if they go badly, they could prove a setback.

"If the Sunnis end up feeling disenfranchised, civil conflict is certainly not a given - the Shiites were disenfranchised for 80 years and the country held. But it's a big risk," says Hiltermann of the ICG.

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