Monday 15 / June / 2026
Muscat: Sayyid Hamoud bin Faisal Al Busaidi, Minister of Interior, affirmed that the Royal directive to allocate a seat for Omani women in the Shura Council from each governorate comes within the framework of the keenness of His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik to ensure the permanent representation of women from various governorates in the Council and to actively enhance the base of community participation.
The Minister explained that the most prominent regulations and bases that will be adopted to implement the Royal directive consist of allocating 11 seats for women in the Shura Council, distributed at a rate of one seat for each governorate, while maintaining women’s candidacy for their wilayats according to the current system as specified by the Election Law.
Women candidates whose names are included in the final list will compete on an equal footing with the rest of the candidates to represent the wilayat.
Al Busaidi pointed out that a woman’s win of the additional seat allocated to her at the level of the governorate’s wilayats is calculated based on the candidate securing the highest percentage of votes out of the total number of voters within the scope of the wilayat from which she ran, compared to other female candidates in the same wilayats of the governorate.
The woman candidate who obtains the highest percentage of votes in the governorate is considered the winner of the additional seat and represents the wilayat for which she ran.
The Minister of Interior noted that if a woman wins the regular seat for that wilayat—according to the Omani population size—by obtaining the highest number of votes, the seat allocated for the governorate remains available to be contested by other woman candidates at the level of the governorate’s wilayats.
