Thursday, Feb 13, 2003
Political reforms in the Gulf
By C. Raja Mohan
MUSCAT Feb. 12. While the Bush Administration talks of promoting democracy in the Arab world after the war against Iraq, the Gulf Kingdoms are not waiting for the cataclysmic event. Many countries in the region, including Oman, are already down the road of political reform.
Last week, the Sultanate of Oman announced that elections to the national legislature called the `Majlis-al-Shura' will take place on October 2. Oman now joins Bahrain in having elections on the basis of universal suffrage. While Kuwait has had elections in the last decade, women remain excluded from the process.
No, the fever of democracy as we know in India is not about break out in the Arab Kingdoms of the Gulf. But the elections in Oman are part of a cautious opening towards more participatory political processes in the Gulf.
Analysts across the world have held the narrow base of decision-making and the closed political structures in the region as factors responsible for the dramatic rise of religious extremism and terrorism in this part of the world.
While the Americans want to see movement towards democratic reform, as part of its global war on terrorism, many Gulf States are ready to open up because their people want it.
The Gulf nations have also come to the conclusion that delaying reforms could be more dangerous than initiating them now. Instead of letting the U.S. step up pressure for reform, the region has realised the value of moving down the path of reforms at a pace set by local considerations. Sultan Qaboos bin Said, who consolidated the national unity and has transformed Oman into a prosperous State in the last three decades is one of the more popular rulers of the region. He had embarked on political reforms when they were not in fashion a decade ago, and long before the U.S. pressures for reforms in the region intensified after September 11.
In the past, only selected people could vote for the 83 member Majlis. Only a quarter of the country's population above the age of 21 could take part in the elections. The voters were chosen from among tribal leaders, intellectuals and businessmen.
The process is now open to everyone, including women. The Majlis, however, has limited consultative powers and has no say in security and foreign affairs. Nevertheless, the move towards universal suffrage and expanding the consultative process has been widely welcomed in the country. *** The smaller kingdoms in the Gulf including Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain have in recent years steadily moved towards bolder political initiatives. But a big question mark hangs over the politics of Saudi Arabia, the most conservative of the kingdoms in the region.
Latest reports from Saudi Arabia indicate that Crown Prince Abdullah who has ran the country since the mid 1990s has taken the decision to launch political reforms in the near future.
Saudi Arabia, from where 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in the September 11 attacks against the United States came, has been under intense pressure from Washington to change its political ways.
The American pressure for reforms from outside was matched by demands for change from within. Earlier this month, a letter sent to Crown Prince Abdullah by 104 Saudi public figures- former Ministers, university teachers, authors and journalists- seeking reforms was leaked to the press.
Amounting a veritable "bill of rights'', the letter called for a Saudi Parliament, free elections, a fairer distribution of wealth, a crackdown on corruption and more rights for women.
Crown Prince Abdullah called some of the signatories of the document for consultations and all indications are that Saudi Arabia would begin to take steps towards the liberalisation of its political system after the current crisis in the Gulf comes to an end. In another signal of the intent to reform, the Government of Saudi Arabia received delegations of the U.N. human rights team and a New York-based Human Rights Watch delegation, the first such visits to the Kingdom.
It is believed that decisions have already been taken to hold elections soon to local bodies and provincial assemblies. The expectation is that over a period of five or six years a credible and elected national assembly will emerge. *** As political reforms begin to take hold in the Gulf, India needs to alter the image of the Gulf in India as an authoritarian backwater. While full-fledged democracy is some distance away, significant experimentation with Arab political futures has begun.
If New Delhi recognises that it has a huge stake in the success of the political modernisation of the Gulf, it will offer a quiet hand of encouragement and assistance to make them a success.
India's own battle against terrorism cannot be won without a transformation of the Persian Gulf. The links, ideological and financial, between the extremist trends in the Gulf and the Subcontinent are deep. In that sense the success of the political liberalisation of the Gulf States is in India's own long-term security interests.
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