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Qatar stays an necessary nation to the West because it hosted the Taliban. , Picture: Unsplash
Qatar’s ruling emir mentioned Tuesday his small, energy-rich nation will maintain a referendum on ending a short-lived experiment in electing members of the nation’s advisory Shura Council.
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani provided no fast timeline for the referendum in an annual deal with to the Shura Council, which drafts legal guidelines, approves state budgets, debates main points and supplies recommendation to the ruler. The physique doesn’t have sway over issues of defence, safety and the financial system.
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Nonetheless, it marks one more rollback within the hereditaryly dominated Gulf Arab states in its halting steps to embrace representational rule, nevertheless tentative, following efforts by the USA to push more durable for democratic reforms within the Center East after the Sept 11, 2001, assaults. and hopes for democracy within the area rose within the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring.
From its perspective, Qatar noticed the one-time 2021 vote seemingly as rising tensions between tribes and households within the nation simply months after a diplomatic disaster between Doha and 4 Arab nations ended.
We’re all one household in Qatar, Sheikh Tamim mentioned, based on a transcript revealed by the state-run Qatar Information Company. The competition between candidates for membership within the Shura Council befell inside households and tribes, and there are totally different views concerning the repercussions of such competitors on our norms, traditions, in addition to the standard social establishments and their cohesion.
The emir added: The competition assumes an identity-based character that we’re not geared up to deal with, with potential problems over time that we’d relatively keep away from.
The nation’s electoral legislation distinguishes between born and naturalized Qatari residents and bars the latter from electoral participation. Human Rights Watch described the system as discriminatory, excluding hundreds of Qataris from working or voting. The disqualifications have sparked minor tribal protests that led to a number of arrests.
Qatar first launched plans for the legislative elections in its 2003 structure, however authorities repeatedly postponed the vote. The nation lastly held the vote to elect two-thirds of the Shura Council in October 2021, simply after the tip of a boycott of Qatar by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that tore the Gulf Arab states aside.
The vote additionally got here a few yr forward of Qatar internet hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup, an occasion that drew intense scrutiny from the West to each Doha’s remedy of international laborers and its system of governance. Qatar stays an necessary nation to the West because it hosted the Taliban and assisted within the chaotic 2021 NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan and as a mediator because the Israel-Hamas conflict rages within the Gaza Strip and has expanded to Lebanon.
Qatar, like different Gulf Arab states, is dominated by a hereditary chief with final say in how the nation is ruled. Earlier than the oil business roared into the Gulf and upended a whole bunch of years of governance, rulers led by consensus amongst their folks.
The US after the Chilly Struggle started a push for democracy within the Mideast, whereas rigorously balancing its relationships with longtime consumer states it cultivated in its competitors with the Soviet Union and its assist of Israel. That push strengthened below then-President George W Bush following the 9/11 assaults, which noticed Gulf Arab states make tentative strikes towards some kind of illustration.
The US State Division didn’t reply to a request for remark over the announcement by Qatar, residence to the huge Al-Udeid Air Base internet hosting the ahead headquarters of the US navy’s Central Command.
Governance by consensus is one thing Gulf rulers try to keep up even right this moment at the same time as some sit atop huge sums of oil and gasoline wealth which have reworked their international locations.
Sheikh Tamim alluded to that in his speech Tuesday, sustaining that the Shura Council will not be a consultant parliament in a democratic system.
In Qatar, the folks and the federal government have a direct civic relationship, and there are acknowledged norms and mechanisms for direct communication between the folks and the governance, he mentioned.
Nevertheless it’s not simply Qatar rolling again on its experiment in consultant authorities. In Might, the ruler of oil-rich Kuwait dissolved his nation’s parliament for as a lot as 4 years. Whereas the Kuwaiti parliament had struggled, it represented the Gulf Arab state’s most free-wheeling legislative physique and will problem the nation’s rulers.
Over a decade on from the 2011 Arab Spring protests, we have seen this sort of retreat coming for a while, mentioned Kristin Smith Diwan, a senior resident scholar on the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
It is necessary to acknowledge there was a debate on this and there was a preferred push from under for extra illustration and accountability, Diwan mentioned. Nevertheless it looks like that second has handed.
(Solely the headline and movie of this report might have been reworked by the Enterprise Customary workers; the remainder of the content material is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First Printed: Oct 15 2024 | 9:37 PM ist
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