From CDHR
December 18, 2008
Buttressing a Failing System
By Ali Alyami
By decreeing the formation of a constellation of power-hungry and competing royal princes to determine who among them should rule after he and his designated replacement, Crown Prince Sultan either die or cannot govern, King Abdullah put an end to speculations and hopes for power sharing with his disenfranchised subjects. Instead of opening the political process and empowering the people to help determine their future and the fate of their important but unstable country, King Abdullah reinforced his family’s exclusionary and authoritarian political structure, his government’s contested interpretation of Islam and the use of religion to justify the royal family’s legitimacy. The Saudi people see Abdullah’s formation of the Allegiance Council and the staffing of it only by members of the royal family as an expansion of the royal family’s continuing control over Saudi Arabia, its wealth and Muslim holy shrines. While there are some, especially in the West, who see the selection of the king and the crown prince as a positive step toward reform, the Saudi people see it as a rejection of political participation by the people.
Having succeeded in the weakening of US influence (some argue defeat) in Arab and Muslim countries and in causing a split between the US and its traditional European allies, the Saudi royal family feels freer now to ignore or reject any US pressure to change its course of action in regard to political reforms in Saudi Arabia. This translates to the continuation of religious extremism and the exportation of Wahhabi deadly ideology. Not only will religious intolerance and extremism continue due to lack of progress in political reforms, but so will rampant corruption, lack of accountability and transparency, as well as strengthening of religious extremists.