DUBAI: Bahrain held a parliamentary election on Saturday amid boycott calls from dissolved opposition groups which were barred from taking part.

The country’s two main opposition groups, the Shia Al-Wefaq and secular Waad, were barred from fielding candidates. The polls opened at 8am local time and closed at 8pm.

King Hamad in September urged voters to take part in the vote, in which officials said 293 people — including 41 women — were running for parliament.

A municipal poll coincides with the parliamentary vote.

The tiny Gulf kingdom has been hit by unrest since 2011, when security forces crushed Shia-led protests demanding a constitutional monarchy and an elected prime minister.

Bahrain has repeatedly accused Shia-dominated Iran of stoking unrest.

Opposition parties shunned the last elections in 2014, the first since the 2011 crackdown, denouncing the vote as a “farce”.

More than 350,000 Bahrainis were eligible to vote in Saturday’s poll, according to Justice Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ali al-Khalifa, adding that there were 54 polling stations across the country.

On Saturday, the interior ministry warned voters to “dismiss rumours that affect the electoral process”, accusing Iran of interference in the process.

It urged citizens to depend on “reliable sources” after people reportedly received text messages warning them not to head to polling stations as they had been stricken from the electoral roll.

The ministry said Tehran was behind around 40,000 texts sent to Bahraini citizens that “aimed to negatively affect” the elections, adding that other messages came from people inside the kingdom.

At least six people were detained and charged this month for “obstructing the electoral process”, according to Bahrain’s public prosecutor.

One of the six was Ali Rashed al-Asheeri, a former member of parliament with Al-Wefaq, according to the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy.

Asheeri had tweeted that he and his family would boycott the polls.

Al-Wefaq called for a boycott of this year’s parliamentary election after a law issued in June barred “leaders and members of political associations dissolved for violating the kingdom’s constitution or its laws” from fielding candidates.

Experts have questioned the value of a parliamentary election in which the opposition is not allowed to participate.

Neil Partrick, a specialist in Gulf Arab politics, said Bahrain’s elections “have lost all practical and political meaning” since the 2010 boycott by Al-Wefaq — the main movement representing the country’s Shia population.

“The subsequent outlawing of Al-Wefaq, and of the relatively liberal, cross-sect, Waad trend, has merely underlined the meaninglessness of Bahraini elections,” he said.

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2018