JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia - Islamist candidates endorsed by religious scholars looked set for victory Friday in local polls in the Saudi commercial capital of Jeddah, mirroring wins in the male-only elections in other cities, candidates said.
But one of the likely winners insisted that the clerics' backing was just "the icing on the cake" and that Islamist candidates had conducted a more active campaign than their liberal rivals.
Official results from Thursday's third round of voting to elect half the members of municipal councils in several western and northern regions are expected to be released Saturday, but initial returns from Jeddah polling stations pointed to a win by candidates on an informal "golden list".
Women were barred from the unprecedented nationwide ballot being conducted in stages in oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
"The 'golden list' is on course for a sweeping victory," Najmeddin Zafer, a businessman and newspaper columnist who ran for one of Jeddah's seven elected seats, told AFP.
The seven anticipated winners ran separately in each of the city's seven constituencies but were backed as a group by influential clerics, including prominent Sunni cleric Sheikh Safar al-Hawali.
Rivals failed in an attempt to disqualify them from running after experts ruling on election disputes concluded that they had not violated rules barring the formation of electoral lists.
Zafer admitted that "businessmen and the intellectual elite" -- a reference to liberals -- failed to organize themselves and effectively looked down on the municipal elections.
"Businessmen and intellectuals were negative, while the Islamists were organized," he said, noting that Islamists had also won in the capital Riyadh and the main eastern city of Dammam in earlier stages of the municipal elections which began in February.
Abdul Rahman Yamani, one of the projected winners from a field of around 500 hopefuls, said that if the predictions came true, he and his colleagues' victory would be down to four factors.
"First, we are a religious people by nature, and secular people are not accepted (by society)," he said.
"Secondly, voters want competence, and the (likely winners) are first-class professionals.
"Thirdly, they worked hard to organize their campaign. Then came the clerics' endorsement, which was the icing on the cake," said Yamani, an engineering graduate from Stanford and Florida universities in the United States.
A total of 244 seats were up for grabs in Thursday's third round, which completed the election of half the members of 178 municipal councils across the conservative Muslim kingdom.
The remaining seats will be filled by the government.
04/22/2005 09:47 GMT