DOHA: In what is a highly technology-driven campaign for the upcoming Central Municipal Council (CMC) election, there is at least one contestant who hasn’t put up a poster or banner, and is not using the social media for canvassing.
Mohamed Saleh Al Khayarin (pictured), in the fray from Constituency number 16 (Al Rayyan), is seeking re-election to the CMC for the fourth straight term, but he says he has thrown his hat in the ring this time again because of pressure from his constituents.
“It is the people of my area who have asked me to fight the election again. I wasn’t keen to do so,” Al Khayarin told The Peninsula.
“I don’t want to make election promises.” Al Khayarin was first elected to the CMC in 2003 when election for the second term of the CMC, which has a four-year tenure, was held.
Al Rayyan is one of the most influential of the 29 civic constituencies because it has within it Qatar Foundation and Qatar campuses of all the elite foreign educational institutions.
“I have no election manifesto so there is no question of putting up posters or banners or launching a campaign on the social media,” he said.
But, of course, if re-elected which he is quite sure of, he said he would follow up on development projects lined up for his constituency.
Al Khayarin has three rivals but says he has an edge over them because he has been living in his constituency for the past 35 years.
“I am the oldest of the residents among all the four contestants who are in the fray from the ward,” he said.
Contrast Al Khayarin’s give-a-damn attitude towards electioneering with the spirited canvassing of Sheikha Al Jefairi, for instance, who is re-contesting from constituency number 8 (which includes Old Airport, Najma and Nuaija, among other localities) — she has deployed two teams to manage her poll campaign on the social media, one of them only for Twitter.
Meanwhile, in a novel way of canvassing, another woman candidate, Amaal Al Mohannadi, from constituency number 17, has come out with a video featuring a song on problems in her ward and ways to solve them.
She has uploaded the song titled ‘Izhelha’ (We Can Do It) on YouTube and it is quite a hit with her constituents.
The Peninsula
