Sunday 24 / November / 2024
Muscat: A total of 126 representatives were elected after results of the third term of various municipal councils in the Sultanate of Oman were announced on Sunday night.
Voting was held on Sunday from 7am to 7pm with the Ministry of Interior confirming that a total of 288,469 voters had exercised their franchise.
Out of the total voters, 164,109 were men while 124,360 women voted, demonstrating the strong interest among women voters.
Voting percentage was recorded at just around 40 percent as 288,469 of the 731,767 voters used their franchise.
For the first time the voting was done through an electronic application – ‘Intakheb’.
In Muscat, 12 members from 85 candidates were elected while 20 from 145 candidates were elected from Dhofar governorate.
In Musandam, eight members were elected from the 22 in fray, while six won from 20 in race in Al Buraimi governorate.
Al Dakhiliyah elected 18 representatives from the registered 85 candidates and 12 members were among the 97 contestants that won in North Al Batinah.
In South Al Batinah, a similar number of 12 winners were announced from the 49 in fray while ten were elected from 61 candidates in South Al Sharqiyah.
A total of 14 members were elected from the 45 in the race in North Al Sharqiyah while six members won from 31 in the fray in Al Dhahirah.
In Al Wusta governorate, eight members won from the 56 contestants.
It may be mentioned that His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik during his meeting with the sheikhs and dignitaries of the governorates last year, stressed on the activation of the roles of the governorates, investing in their own resources and benefiting from them.
Eng. Khalid Hilal Al Busaidi, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Interior, Chairman of the Main Committee for Third Term Municipal Councils’ Elections, announced the names of winners of the elections on Sunday evening.
Sayyid Hamoud Faisal Al Busaidi, Minister of Interior, has said that His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik accorded attention to activating the role of municipal councils.
The minister underlined His Majesty’s keenness on upgrading the councils’ legislations to empower them to realise more partnership with the government in municipal affairs, notably by boosting the overall development march and the growth of governorates—so that the councils could serve as channels of national action aimed to accomplish the goals of Oman Vision 2040.
The minister said in a speech that, over the past period, the government embarked on the modernization of procedures regulating elections in line with this vision and its approaches for digital transition.
The action, he said, involved the automation of all steps and stages of the electoral process. It begins from the moment the names of voters are entered in the Electoral Register and proceeds through the stage of candidacy to the stages of voting and votes sorting.
The minister pointed out that new high accuracy applications were implemented, to ensure both secrecy and cybersecurity. This process, he explained, is fully reliant on artificial intelligence accessed via smart phones to enable the voters from Oman and abroad to select their preferred candidates.
Sayyid Hamoud stressed that both voting and sorting operations contributed to saving time and effort, as well as financial cost. As a result, he said, the procedures were streamlined for voters, candidates contesting the elections and the supervising committees.
The minister congratulated the winning candidates who will now onwards serve as members of the municipal councils of their respective wilayats during the third term. He wished the members success in performing their missions. He also thanked all parties that contributed to the success of the elections—the government departments, the private sector establishments, the members of the preparatory and organizational committees and all those who contributed to the elections.
