Saudi Glasnost?

Peter Bergen seems to think so:

A couple of days after the conference ended, Riyadh was the first city to vote in the only nationwide elections that have been held since the modern Saudi kingdom was founded three quarters of a century ago. Neither the conference nor the election — which was for only half of the seats on Riyadh's municipal councils — was anything more than an incremental step along the road to an honest self-assessment about how al Qaeda was incubated within the kingdom, but both are indicative of a gradualist Saudi glasnost that may mark the beginnings of democratization and an enlarged civil society no longer amenable to the breeding of terrorists.

I think this will turn out to be as much of a sham as Gorbachev's glasnost, but if the end result is the same, count me for it.