The news has gone round the world that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has announced that Saudi women are to have the right to vote in future municipal elections and also to stand as candidates. He was careful to exclude them from the round of elections held last week. Nonetheless, I have a strong memory of what an adventurous topic it was even to raise the issue with him.

It was six years ago that I visited Saudi Arabia as part of a European Parliament delegation headed by my fellow MEP and Socialist Party member, Lilli Gruber. In Riyadh, we were sumptuously greeted. The airport itself, famously, would pass as a palace elsewhere: all marble and fountains, its VIP area a colossal hall full of gilded settees. However, the luxury coexisted with a discernible strain of austerity. At the hotel we were served an Arabian repast of lamb, herbs, dips... all enjoyable but no wine.

The next day, after a meeting with the representative council, the Shura, we had a meeting with Abdullah, then still officially Crown Prince, although effectively the regent, given the poor health of his brother the king. Prince Abdullah must have been about 81 already.

Getting to the 45-minute audience was memorable in itself. A palace with immaculate grounds and a heavy guard of light tanks and sandbags. Wide corridors resplendent with marble. Then, that relative touch of austerity again – a rather simpler anteroom.

Then the Crown Prince’s office, beautifully decorated with enormous Persian carpets.

I slipped in that I was from Malta, to which he smiled. My question related to why women in Saudi Arabia are still not allowed to drive. His answer was: “It will be easier for me to give the vote to women than to give them a licence to drive.” This prompted a memorable exchange, which had some people drawing their breath. Ms Gruber courageously asked about women’s right to vote. The answer we got was an elegant non-answer, although, in a way, the answer was really given, indirectly, the following day.

We visited the meetings for the municipal elections that were due. They were held under tents, with an air of a tribal family gathering, serving food and tea and providing comfortable chairs. One, however, was much better organised than the other. Tellingly this was, as we found out later, the religious section.

The following day was voting day. In the evening, we had a private meeting organised for us, where we met women representing different sections of society. It is here that we met representatives of the professional class (doctors, architects) who were critical of the system.

However, I would argue theirs was not the only critical look that the monarchy had to take into consideration. Everywhere in public places there was another critical look that was implicit. The magnificent public spaces were always paired with heavy security.

The second critical look belonged not to the monarchy, which clearly felt insecure, but to the other group of people that had to be taken into consideration: the conservative clerics, upon whose seal of approval the security of the monarchy depends.

By the time the next municipal elections come round and women can exercise their right to vote, 10 years would have passed since Ms Gruber’s asking about women’s voting rights. By one measure, that is an infinitely long time.

However, by another measure, it is not. Ms Gruber asked her question when the arrangements for the municipal elections had already been made. The next such elections were held last week, which is when Abdullah, now king, made his announcement.

It is true that the commitment was to grant the vote several years down the road. However, I believe that what the king was attempting was to steer between the liberal activists and the conservatives. The deferred commitment signals a change that can be looked forward to while also warning liberal activists not to rush to make other demands that might unleash a backlash. It was an announcement that laid down a marker as well as a political tempo.

Given that we are talking about rights that any European would take to be natural and fundamental, it might seem that any acceptance of such a slow pace of reform amounts to colluding with an oppressive political system. I take the point. However, the situation requires more complex decision-making on our part.

Europeans need to judge whether a faster pace of reform might not jeopardise all reform by unravelling the system and seeing it replaced with something more draconian rather than more liberal. It is not an easy judgement to make.

However, I will say this. Having been to the country, I can say that I believe King Abdullah’s announcement came across as dramatic over there. At the same time, I think that, besides the hard brave activism going on within the country itself, I would like to think that the frank discussion we had with the then crown prince played a latent part in King’s Abdullah decision.

Dr Attard Montalto is a Labour member of the European Parliament.

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