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#FNC Elections 101, twitter community speaks

September 7, 2011 3:45 by Eva Fernandes

With the FNC Elections just around the corner, Kipp found ourselves discussing the elections with anyone who’ll listen. Though a few people we spoke with were more politically inclined than average, most were surprisingly uninformed about the proceedings. And as we sifted through the details of what some are calling a historic moment for the UAE, we realised some of our Kipp readers may be in the same boat.

So, if you don’t know much about it, here’s a handy guide for you. And if you think you already know what you need to know, think again. There just might be some things here that you didn’t know about.

Here it goes, much like the basic training programme the candidates themselves recently went through, here is Kipp’s version of FNC Elections 101.

1. The FNC stands for the Federal National Council which is an advisory board (note it’s not legislative) comprising of 40 members. While 20 are elected by a group of selected citizens, the other 20 comprise of Supreme Council Members and the Rulers of the UAE.
2. Campaigning for the election started on September 4 and will go on all the way till September 21.
3. The elections will take place on September 24 and the final list of FNC members will be announced on September 28.
4. This year, there are 468 candidates running for election. Of these 85 are women, a considerable number considering that 63 women stood for the first election way back in 2006. Oh yeah, the elections take place every 4 years.
5. As per the National Election Committee (NEC), candidates cannot spend more than Dh2 million on their campaigns…though judging by some of the campaigning we’ve heard about we wonder how many are being true to the limit.

1. During the first election, just fewer than 7,000 nationals were selected to vote. This time around, the NEC has indeed made headlines as it has been revealed that up to 130,000 Emiratis have been selected to vote. Out of the 130,000, women account for 46 per cent of the electorate.

And because the Twitter feeds for #FNC2011 has been we’ve peppered our guide with screenshots of some of the best Tweets we’ve read on the topic.

Not everyone is pleased about the current appointments and campaigning process.

Others, however are less cynical. (Kipp probably wouldn’t get along so well with them)…

And though expatriates are not selected to vote for the ongoing campaigns, some are…

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Tags: FNC elections, FNC elections 2011, FNC elections campaign, FNC elections UAE, FNC elections understanding, FNC elections understanding campaign FNC candidates, UAE elections, UAE elections 2011