Muscat – The voter turnout of 39.42 per cent in the municipal council elections held on Sunday is a normal rate, H E Khalid bin Hilal al Busaidi, chairman of the main committee for the elections and Undersecretary in the Ministry of Interior, stated on Monday.
H E Busaidi, addressing a press conference along with other members of the election committee on the success of the electoral process, added that the Ministry of Interior is working on evaluating and reviewing the voter turnout.
In the last municipal council elections held in 2016, when the whole process was manual and the voters had to go to the polling booths to exercise their franchise, the turnout was 39.85 per cent.
H E Busaidi said that the Ministry of Interior had sought to make a quantum leap in the use of the latest digital technologies in order to facilitate candidates and voters alike in the electoral process.
“Employing digital technologies in line with the government’s digital transformation programme is a priority of the information and communication technology as laidout in Oman Vision 2040,” he stated.
Till Monday evening there were no objection to the election results, he pointed out. This indicates that the process – for being foolproof – had negligible scope for any objection.
An objection request can be submitted online via the Ministry of Interior’s website during the legally specified period.
“The use of smartphones for voting also contributed to reducing the overall financial cost of the electoral process,” H E Busaidi added.
H E Dr Ali bin Amer al Shidhani, Undersecretary for Communications and Information Technology in the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology, and chairman of the Technical Committee of the elections, informed that no challenges were witnessed on the technical side of voting.
H E Sayyid Hamoud Faisal al Busaidi, Minister of Interior, after the results were announced on Sunday, congratulated the winning candidates. He wished the members success in performing their missions.
He also thanked all parties that contributed to the success of the elections – the government departments, the private sector establishments, the members of the preparatory and organisational committees and all others who were involved in the process.
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