Shi‘ites Do Well in Bahrain Elections, Round One

I was away over the weekend so I'm a little late for the Bahrain election wrap-up, but here goes: on the whole, despite the arrests of Shi‘ite activists and others in the runup to the vote, the main Shi‘ite bloc Al-Wifaq (sometimes transliterated Wefaq) did well, winning all 18 seats it was contesting and holding its own from the last Parliament, where it had 17 seats and one aligned independent. Only nine of the 40 seats have to go to runoff next weekend.

Salafi and Islamist groups, even some previously allied with the government, did poorly; most of the remaining seats won so far went to pro-business, pro-government elements.

If two candidates of the leftwing Wa‘d movement who made it into the runoff should win seats, Parliament would be divided equally between pro-government forces and "opposition," though that may be a big "if."

On the whole, in the up-and-down drama of Gulf Parliamentary life, the results are more credible than they might have been, given widespread criticism of the recent arrests.

I know some of my regular readers know Bahrain well; if I get highly informative comments I may move some into the post itself, with our permission of course.

Here are some of the main analyses in English:

BBC

Al-Jazeera English

Arab News (Saudi Arabia)

Gulf News (Bahrain) with more election coverage from them here

The National (Abu Dhabi)

For Arabic readers, the main Bahrain papers Akhbar al-Khalij, Al-Watan, Al-Ayyam, and the voice of the Wifaq bloc, Al-Wifaq.