Eight women are among the 40 new members of parliament elected after the second round of voting held this weekend in Bahrain, a record in the Gulf monarchy, authorities announced on Sunday.
More than 70% of voters voted on Saturday to fill the remaining 34 seats in the lower house, in an unopposed election.
According to the final results published by the official agency, seven women and many new figures joined the 6 candidates, including five men, designated in the first round.
Women had never won more than 6 seats in Parliament.
A record number of 330 candidates took part in the polls, but representatives of the two main opposition groups, Al-Wefaq (Shia) and Waad (secular), banned by the government in 2016 and 2017, were not allowed to show up there.
A key ally of the United States in the region, Bahrain was rocked by unrest in 2011, when security forces suppressed protests led in particular by Shiite parties demanding a constitutional monarchy. The ruling family is from the Sunni community.
Amnesty International had denounced before the elections “the environment of political repression” in which they were held.
“Only the voices of Bahraini voters are heard, other voices are neither listened to nor influential,” election organizer Nawaf Abdullah Hamzah said on Saturday.
Bahrain, whose capital Manama hosts the US Fifth Fleet and a British base, regularly accuses Shiite Iran of being behind unrest in the kingdom, which Tehran denies.
Around 350,000 voters are registered in the kingdom, which has a population of 1.4 million.