Why has Qatar gone constitutional?
Abdulhadi Khalaf
On July 2, the chairman of the 32-man committee appointed by the emir of Qatar, Sheikh
Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, to draft a permanent constitution for the emirate, presented
the document to the ruler.
It proposed a series of reforms, such as establishing a legislative council 30 of whose
45 members would be elected, the remainder appointed by the emir and granting women the
right to vote and run for public office.
While the full text of the 150-article draft constitution has not been released, available
information indicates that it shares two common features with Arab constitutions. One is a
guarantee of public freedoms, including assembly, association, expression and opinion,
press and publishing, religion, and so on. Second, it leaves it to the law to regulate the
way in which these freedoms can actually be exercised a stipulation that continues to
sanction the systematic denial of citizens’ constitutional rights by undemocratic
regimes.
Before it transforms Qatar into another “constitutional monarchy,” the draft
document has to be ratified and promulgated by the emir. No date has yet been set for this
historic event, which would start a new phase in the political reform process begun by
Sheikh Hamad in November 1998, when he promised to modernize state institutions and
provide Qatar with a permanent constitution and an elected Parliament.
For a time, he seemed on track. In March 1999, Qatar held its first municipal elections,
becoming the first member state of the Gulf Cooperation Council which includes Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and the UAE to let women vote and run for office. No
women were actually elected, but the move was a public relations coup, earning the emir
the congratulations of the US House of Representatives for his “commitment to
suffrage and … democracy.”
While limited to municipal elections, the enfranchisement of Qatari women was historically
significant given the plight of their sisters in Saudi Arabia, and the all-male Kuwaiti
Parliament’s successful torpedoing of a government proposal to extend political
rights to Kuwaiti women.
Why has Sheikh Hamad opted for the constitutional path? He faces no serious challenge to
his authority. Successive Qatari rulers have more than their GCC counterparts been
remarkably successful in dealing with popular discontent, elite grievances and periodic
demands by tribal leaders.
Some observers speculate Sheikh Hamad has been pursuing these limited reforms to
“ruffle the feathers” of other Gulf rulers, particularly those of Bahrain and
Saudi Arabia. Alternatively, he may be motivated by a real interest in good governance,
the rule of law and other requisites of modern statehood.
Others point to Qatar’s new role as a major US military base in the region. Homemade
democratic reforms, they argue, would pre-empt any serious pressure for such measures from
Washington, which might otherwise come under criticism for its coziness with the
anachronistic regimes of the GCC. This becomes an important factor as the number of
American servicemen and women stationed in Qatar grows from 3,000 as a result both of
the relocation of troops from bases in Saudi Arabia and preparations for a military
campaign against Iraq.
My own guess is that Sheikh Hamad has at least one additional reason to resort to
political reforms: as a pro-active strategy to maintain his rule and secure his
regime’s stability of his regime. Conscious of his family’s history of palace
coups, Sheikh Hamad has to keep a watchful eye on his own backyard. Credible threats to
his regime are not to be found in Iraq, Iran, or even Bahrain Qatar’s longtime
rival but within Doha’s royal palaces. The emir’s reforms play the dual role
of discrediting and discouraging would-be schemers of the next palace coup.
Even by GCC standards, Qatar is a relatively recent political formation. The Al-Thani, a
branch of the Najdi tribe of Tamim, established their rule there in the latter half of the
19th century. Although they soon came under Ottoman tutelage and then British protection,
their rule was often challenged by local tribes, encouraged by competing tribal chiefs in
Najd and Bahrain. But while conflicts and armed skirmishes with Qatar’s neighbors
have sometimes become minor international incidents, the ruling family’s own
factional quarrels have been the main and most serious source of regime instability.
Sheikh Hamad himself seized power from his father in a 1995 palace coup, and the deposed
father repeatedly tried to stage a counter-coup. The most spectacular, in 1996, resulted
in the arrest of scores of co-plotters and sympathizers within the armed forces and ruling
family. He is now said to have finally given up.
The 1995 coup was no aberration. Every ruler of Qatar since 1949, including Sheikh
Hamad’s father, took power after the forced abdication of a predecessor. Official
history records that each “transfer of power” took place “with the support
and approval of the ruling family, the Qatari people and the armed forces.”
Whatever Sheikh Hamad’s motives, limited reforms cannot take the country far or erase
a long history of political misrule and mismanagement of resources.
Like his Bahraini counterpart, Sheikh Hamad considers the process of political reform to
be an emiri prerogative, delivered through makramas, or royal favors. Both rulers have
avoided giving the impression that their reforms are a response to popular demands, or
deliberations with representatives of their peoples. Rather, it is emphasized that the
emir alone has the power to chart the course, parameters and scope of liberalization.
Apart from having to worry about the next coup attempt, Sheikh Hamad enjoys the perks that
go with the ruler’s job in the other GCC states. His executive and legislative powers
are absolute. While he may consult with senior ruling family members, and on occasion
tribal notables and merchant families, he rules directly and via his appointed Cabinet. As
ruler he appoints the government, the judiciary including senior clerics and all
senior civil servants and public sector office-holders. He has full and personal control
over the state and its revenues.
This total control enables Gulf rulers to become the main channels of wealth distribution,
and thus determine the political role as well as the social and economic standing of each
of their subjects whether a senior tribal notable, a merchant or a
“stateless” bidoon.
But decades of misrule, mismanagement and failures have cast a long and dark shadow over
the Gulf states. Would-be reforming rulers would have to start by addressing the most
spectacular of their predecessors’ failures their inability to build viable
national institutions. Their absence is both a cause and a result of the failure to
democratize, the chronic violations of human rights of both citizens and foreign residents
and the pervasive corruption. Existing institutions, such as the judiciary, the media, the
armed forces, or the central banks, have been reduced to instruments of the ruling
families.
Rather than promoting the development of constitutional regimes, the limited political
changes envisaged in Qatar, as in Bahrain, could end up merely modernizing the prevailing
patrimonial regimes while preserving the state, its administration, its resources and
its military force as the personal instruments of the head of state and his dynasty.
To gain credibility and viability, the political reform plans pursued in the Gulf need to
address the role and privileges of the ruling families, within a democratic system whose
basic premise is equality between all citizens regardless of tribal origin, ethnicity,
gender or faith. Abdulhadi Khalaf is a Bahraini
academic teaching sociology of development at the University of Lund, Sweden. He wrote
this commentary for The Daily Star
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