RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – One candidate promises to turn his local sewage lake into a jet-ski racing facility. Another has invented an odor-free garbage can. Everyone wants to rid local councils of corruption.

Welcome to today’s free elections in Saudi Arabia, the first since the country’s creation and an extraordinary display of democracy after 70 years of absolute monarchy.

Although the elections are only for half the seats on the nation’s 178 municipal councils, with the rest being allocated by the government, they represent the first hesitant steps toward power-sharing by the autocratic and fabulously wealthy House of Saud.

Women still have no vote. The reason cited for not allowing them even a minor say in running the country was that it was “too complicated” to organize separate polling stations.

But the elections represent a fundamental break with tradition in a society run largely on a tribal basis, one where public grievances are filtered through a network of elders.

While election fever has resulted in more than 1,800 candidates standing for just 104 seats in the Riyadh area alone, only 149,000 men out of 400,000 eligible voters have registered to vote. The wave of enthusiasm that swept the country when the election was announced last year rapidly dissipated when it emerged that women would not be taking part and that real power would remain with unelected council members.

Voter apathy and the need to pay for their own campaigns has, however, hardly dented the zeal of the candidates.

Posters of grim-faced, turbaned candidates decorate roadside billboards.

Their glossy manifestos, devoid of babies, children, women, and animals but promising the earth, are slipped through car windows at traffic lights.

Most of them run their campaigns from Bedouin tents, many the size of tennis courts, that they have erected on empty lots across the city.

Draped in colored lights, fires blazing, some have camels or sheep tethered outside – the former to demonstrate the candidates’ “grassroots” connections, the latter to be slaughtered and eaten at the evening’s feast.

Serious campaigning only starts after 8:00 p.m., when work and afternoon naps are completed, and goes on until at least midnight.

For Bandar al-Saleh, a real-estate developer with matinee-idol looks and the patter of a seasoned politician, this involves enticing an audience with the promise of a free meal and copious amounts of tea. The Saudi equivalent of a Green, he has even invented a means of disposing trash via a tube to the can to reduce smells and a magnetic device, similar to those used on supermarket trolleys, to prevent householders from pushing their giant trash containers onto a neighbor’s property – a common complaint.

When his talk is over, the audience asks questions that often have little to do with the subject at hand.

“What do you intend to do about corruption?” asked a man squatting at the back. “What about the trash that spills out of my can in the summer and stinks out the street?” asked another.