{"id":8723,"date":"2011-07-11T13:11:36","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T09:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=8723"},"modified":"2011-07-16T11:02:05","modified_gmt":"2011-07-16T07:02:05","slug":"emirati-voting-numbers-its-how-you-look-at-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-politics-analysis\/emirati-voting-numbers-its-how-you-look-at-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Emirati Voting Numbers: It&#8217;s How You Look At It&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"highslide\" onclick=\"return vz.expand(this)\" href=\"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/EmElec.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8724\" title=\"EmElec\" src=\"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/EmElec.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"498\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/EmElec.jpg 498w, https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/EmElec-145x93.jpg 145w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 498px) 100vw, 498px\" \/><\/a>Around 129,000 or 14% of Emiratis will be <a href=\"http:\/\/gulfnews.com\/news\/gulf\/uae\/government\/129-000-to-vote-in-fnc-polls-on-september-24-1.836403\" target=\"_blank\">eligible <\/a>to vote in the elections on 24th September 2011 to elect half of the members of the Federal National Council.<\/p>\n<p>To put this another way, only 1.6% of the entire population of the Emirates will be voting. Or, to look at this more positively, considering less than 7,000 Emiratees were eligible to vote in the last elections, clearly some progress \u2013 albeit from an absurd base \u2013 is being made.<\/p>\n<p>Yet there are greater issues <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/161058\/repression-united-arab-emirates\" target=\"_blank\">afoot<\/a>. Not only is the Federal National Council one of the region\u2019s most rubber stamping of rubber stamping institutions, but there are serious problems to do with freedom of expression currently plaguing the UAE, from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/intl\/cms\/s\/0\/720ca4b4-a663-11e0-ae9c-00144feabdc0.html\" target=\"_blank\">removal <\/a>of the Gulf Research Centre to a severe crack-down on those who \u2013 politely \u2013 request more democratic freedoms. I\u2019ll let the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/node\/18898137?story_id=18898137&amp;fsrc=scn\/tw\/te\/rss\/pe\" target=\"_blank\">Economist <\/a>take up the story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DAVID ROBERTS: Around 129,000 or 14% of Emiratis will be eligible to vote, 1.6% of the entire population, but a lot more than the 7,000 eligible to vote in the last elections&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":8724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,83,60,187],"tags":[127,1803,6990,18316,162],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8723"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}