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18,981, or some 81 per cent of the electoral roll. The winning candidates included

Khalil Al-Moayyed (Sunni) 17,991 votes, Taqi Al-Baharna (Shi’ite) 17,862 votes, Ali

Al-Tajir (Shi’ite) 17,852 votes, Qassim Fakhroo (Sunni) 17,846 votes, Mohammed Q

Al-Shirawi (Sunni) 17,816 votes, and Ali Abd-Ali Al-Biladi (Shi’ite) 17,794 votes.

Those who ran in opposition to the winning candidates were viewed as pro-

Government and had called themselves the National Front. Their candidates were

all Sunnis and included Hamad Al-Fadhel who received 1,410 votes, Salim Al-Absy

1,120 votes, and Ahmed Al-Binali 1,112 votes. Lucas believed that the National

Front fielded three Sunni candidates in an attempt to divert the Sunni vote from the

HEC.

One of Lucas’ criticisms of the voting process was that only about thirty per

cent of voters were able to mark the ballot papers themselves. The rest seemed

illiterate and requested the aid of officials in the process of choosing their

candidates. It was announced by the Administration that the Health Council’s

elections would take place on 16 March. 465

Burrows’ initial reaction to the election results was that the figures of the six

winners, which ranged from 17,000 to 18,000, seemed ‘suspiciously similar’. 466

There is no information provided through the Administration, Political Agency, nor

by the Residency that implied foul play. Following the Council’s elections the HEC

465 TNA, FO 1016/465, I.T.M. Lucas’ Report on the Bahrain Election for the Council of Education,
February 10, 1956, 12 February 1956.
466 ‘Bernard Burrows, Residency’s Report for the Month of March 1956’, in Political Diaries of the
Persian Gulf, vol. 20 1955-1958, ed. R.L. Jarman (London: 1990), 1-10 (3).

© Hamad E. Abdulla 149