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Political reform in Bahrain: end of a road?
From Abd al-Hadi Khalaf in Lund
February 19th, 2004 -- On 14 February 2002, Shaykh Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa declared himself king of Bahrain, a “modern, democratic and constitutional monarchy”.
This was the culmination of the political reform process he launched soon after assuming power on the death of his father in March 1999. The reforms included easing restrictions on freedom of expression and association, lifting travel restrictions on dissidents, abrogating state security laws, and — significantly for the region — granting full citizenship rights to women. A series of amnesties emptied Bahraini jails of political prisoners for the first time in over five decades and allowed all exiles to return.
These reconciliatory gestures created a state of national euphoria without precedent in the island’s history since it was “conquered” in 1783 by the present ruling family, the Al Khalifa, and their allies. Bahrainis reciprocated with a resounding 98.4% vote of support at a plebiscite held to approve Shaykh Hamad’s reform blueprint, the Charter for National Action.
This was a major achievement for a ruler who, at first, was dismissed as indecisive and uninspiring. In giving him their support, the leaders of the opposition — many of them recently rehabilitated after long years in prison or exile — were hoping he would reinstate the country’s elected parliament, which had been dissolved by his father in 1975, in exchange for backing his regal aspirations.
During the first two years of his rule, Shaykh Hamad seemed eager to please everyone. His speeches were laced with all the key words one might find in a manual for would-be reforming autocrats. Observers were quick to note that he was raising popular expectations to levels he could not possibly satisfy without confronting hard-liners within the ruling family, including his uncle, Khalifa bin Salman, the country’s prime minister and unchallenged strongman for over three decades.
Constitutional coup
On the day he proclaimed himself king, Hamad decreed a series of amendments to the Constitution which, critics charged, amounted to a wholesale rewrite. This marked the end of a period of transition, and a closing of family ranks in the face of escalating demands by opposition groups, particularly the leaders of the majority Shi’ite community.
The controversial constitutional amendments gave the king extensive authority. Lord Avebury, a long-time British ob-server of political developments in Bahrain, remarked that the absolute monarchs of medieval Europe would have “given their eye-teeth for the powers held by King Hamad”.
Under the new Constitution, the king is “protector of religion and home-land”, “symbol of national unity”. He is head of state, supreme commander of the defence forces and head of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. The king appoints and dismisses ministers, acting ministers, ambassadors, heads of public institutions, judges and members of the Consultative Council. He may “amend the Constitution and propose laws, and he is the authority for their ratification”.
In addition to this direct legislative role, the king gave himself the power to restrict the National Assembly’s own legislative mandate. The most controversial of the constitutional amendments provided for the National Assembly to be composed of two 40-member chambers: a Chamber of Deputies elected by universal suffrage, and a Consultative Council hand-picked by the ruler.
Aware of their own weaknesses and their inability to stand up to the king at this stage, most opposition leaders voiced their disappointment and expected the king to listen to the people and change his mind. Some accused him of reneging on his promises of democracy. The London-based Bahrain Freedom Movement spoke of “a constitutional putsch even more alarming than the 1975 dissolution of parliament”. Similar charges were made by a few other former dissidents. Yet the general tone of criticism remained non-confrontational. And, vindicating the king’s strategic calculations, no one called for street protests or similar action.
While not questioning the royal make-over, some opposition leaders continued to complain that the changes to the Constitution went beyond what was sanctioned by the reform plebiscite. But the king was adamant. He clearly considered the reform process to be a royal prerogative. Henceforth, official statements on political reforms began dropping rhetorical references to “participation” and “national reconciliation” and casting the process as a series of royal favours (makrama, in Arabic).
Buying approval
In unilaterally redefining the parameters of political reform, Hamad made extensive use of his royal prerogative to promulgate laws by decree. He may initially have been encouraged to take this gamble by his opponents’ weakness and infighting. Some observers claim he succumbed to the will of conservative factions within the ruling family, especially the politically more experienced senior members. This is unverifiable.
But one thing is certain. King Hamad may have been an astute tactician, but he has also been lucky. His state’s coffers started to fill up almost immediately after he assumed power. Following several years of instability and decline, oil prices began in 1999 to show a sustained rise. Bahrain’s revenues from oil rose by over 80% that year. This enabled the new ruler to expand his support base within the royal family and among political elites.
In addition to appointing some trusted members of his faction, including another of his sons, to the ruling family council, Hamad increased the monthly stipends allocated to each of its nearly 3,000 members and placed more of them in senior positions in government and public institutions. Extensive improvement works, including new housing projects, were carried out in Rifa’a, the town reserved exclusively for the Al Khalifa.
Hamad’s generosity was particularly conspicuous in the makramas he extended to local elites, including some of the newly pardoned political prisoners and exiles. His effective political use of makrama has elevated it into a strategic instrument of rule. The list of makramas dispensed by him between December 2000 and February 2002 is long and by any measure impressive. The most spectacular consisted of diverse housing grants costing over BD172m (c. $450m). Another makrama wrote off up to a third of every housing loan owed to the state housing bank. Some 30,000 families, nearly 40% of Bahraini citizen households, benefited.
Significantly, Hamad announced this makrama on the eve of promulgating his amendments to the Constitution. While regime opponents cried foul, the costly gesture was a political masterstroke.
On 24 October 2002 the first parliamentary elections since 1973 were held in Bahrain. Four main political organizations decided to boycott the polls, ostensibly in protest at the king’s unwillingness to listen to their views on the substance, pace and direction of the reform process. Their principal objection was to the way the elected chamber’s legislative role had been undercut by the creation of the new upper house, whose members are appointed by the king.
The 53.4% turn-out paled in comparison to the figure of over 92% at the plebiscite 18 months earlier. Yet the king must have been pleased. Given the boycott by four major opposition groups, an even lower turn-out had been anticipated. And while the elections could not be described as free and fair, they were not fraudulent. They were also peaceful, with no one killed or arrested and no property damaged. Hamad had taken obvious risks by unilaterally imposing his terms and emerged seemingly unscathed.
Opposition changes tactics
In contrast, opposition leaders appeared to be in a mess, facing growing frustration within their constituencies. These were the same groups of people who had trusted them when they urged them to rally behind Shaykh Hamad. They had given the reform project their enthusiastic support. Now they were feeling let down and cheated.
Small-scale sit-ins and demonstrations — by the unemployed, victims of torture, women’s rights activists and other disadvantaged groups — had become daily features of life in the country. Opposition leaders, who initially viewed such actions as “untimely” and confrontational, quickly discovered their political value. The political groups that boycotted the election found in these expressions of grievance a common platform to rally most if not all discontented groups in the country — and from which to challenge the king, his government and the “unrepresentative parliament”.
Whether due to over-confidence, miscalculation or the influence of hard-liners within the ruling family, Hamad failed to heed those early warning signs. Indeed, he took steps that further inflamed the situation and fuelled popular anger.
One particularly contentious move was a royal decree granting impunity to officials who had committed crimes and violated human rights in the past. This left hundreds of alleged victims of torture without the possibility of legal redress, while allowing their alleged torturers to pursue their careers within the Ministry of the Interior. Local and international human rights watchdogs, including Amnesty International, urged the king to repeal the decree, noting that it “effectively bans any person from taking legal action against any individual, including civilian or military officials, who had committed or been involved in human rights violations before February 2001”. The king has refused to listen. Impunity remains a serious source of grievance, especially as time passes and more and more alleged victims of torture start to make their stories known and demand redress.
Another highly charged issue was “political naturalization”. This began as a consensual measure that resulted in Bahraini citizenship being granted to some 10,000 stateless “biduns”. Most had been residents of the country for generations and victims of systematic discrimination. The majority of Bahrainis took pride in the fact that theirs was the first Gulf state to solve this region-wide difficulty. But opposition groups claim the government has gone beyond this by selectively extending citizenship to several thousand foreigners. According to opposition sources, many of these are Bedouins from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Syria lured by the promise of citizenship to serve in Bahrain’s military and security forces. “Political naturalization”, it is alleged, aims also at changing the Shi’ite/Sunni balance. These allegations were recently dismissed by an ad hoc parliamentary commission, but official denials are unlikely to be believed in the prevailing climate of distrust and in the absence of transparency.
The tactics adopted by opposition groups seem to be working for the time being. They have shown their ability to force their agenda on the government and members of both chambers of parliament, and the latter — especially the elected members — are under constant pressure to “prove” their independence.
Parliament’s credibility test
This pressure was apparent in a televised row last month between members of the Chamber of Deputies and the government. They had been discussing the findings of an eight-month probe into administrative and financial irregularities at the General Organization for Social Insurance and the Pension Fund Commission, the bodies responsible for public and private sector pensions respectively, that allegedly lost them “hundreds of millions of dinars”. According to one report, both funds could be declared “insolvent by 2007”.
The debate provided a number of deputies with an opportunity to demonstrate their independence and cast off charges that they were ineffective and overpaid. Edited portions were aired on Bahraini television. Public interest was intense because the two organizations handle the pensions of nearly all the country’s wage-earners.
Deputies wanted to cross-examine three ministers, none of them ruling family members, individually from the floor about their alleged roles in the affair. Theoretically, this could lead to deputies requesting a criminal investigation against the ministers. Decades of mismanagement of the funds might come to light, and sceptics voiced doubt that the government would be ready to accept responsibility for it. Reportedly, several of the implicated officials belong to the ruling family, and a serious probe might implicate the prime minister himself.
The speaker, Khalifa al-Dhahrani, sought to restrain members by reminding them that “the future of parliament is in question if deputies insist on confrontation”. He solemnly cautioned his colleagues that similar confrontations with the authorities had led to the dissolution of the Nation-al Assembly in 1975. He did not, he said, “want the country to go through another 28 years without a parliament”.
This warning triggered protests and prompted King Hamad to issue a statement praising both government and deputies for their cooperation and the quality of their debates. These, he added in an obvious rebuke to Dhahrani, “represent a victory for democracy” in Bahrain. Even the prime minister announced that “directives have been issued to government officials urging them to cooperate fully with parliament”.
These assurances helped ease the immediate tension. But the damage was done. At stake is the credibility of the partially elected parliament, the core of Hamad’s reforms. Will it force the king to sack the implicated ministers and let them face trial for corruption, or suffice with just raising the question? How would he deal with his uncle, the prime minister, blamed by many for the country’s economic troubles? More seriously, what might the deputies do next to gain credibility among a doubting public? What more could the opposition groups that boycotted the parliamentary experiment do to convince the public of what they see as the assembly’s ineffectiveness and illegitimacy?
What kind of model?
In Bahrain, the early euphoria over a smooth and speedy process of reform has disappeared as the country reaches the threshold of a political and constitutional crisis. Mutual mistrust is deep and serious, undermining attempts to rebuild bridges between the regime and its opponents. The corrosive effects of the past three decades of misrule, mismanagement of resources and violations of human rights make the reforms that have been implemented appear temporary and unsustainable. To make them work, Bahrain’s king and political elites need to do more than simply wish that things improve.
Bahrain has been held up as a model for some reform-minded members of other ruling families in the Gulf. Although, with the exception of the Saudis, none of these families behave as if under pressure, they have all signalled willingness to reform — including granting a greater role to local elites. The political reforms in Bahrain were seen as exemplifying the kind of measures that could be taken without requiring ruling families to give up any of their privileges — neither control over economic resources and political institutions, nor command of the armed forces and security agencies. Even local elites in some of the neighbouring states may have considered the Bahraini experiment to represent, at least, a significant step away from the prevailing political stagnation.
But the past two years have shown that such a model, based on makrama, does not lead to real reconciliation or produce lasting social peace.
Bahrain’s experience may offer different lessons to would-be reformers in other Gulf monarchies. Processes of political reform require real concessions and can generate new problems that need to be dealt with consensually. It is true that even minor concessions by the ruling families may embolden local elites to demand more substantive political changes. On the other hand, procrastination is likely to prove more dangerous.
Abd al-Hadi Khalaf teaches Sociology of Development at the University of Lund, Sweden
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