Saudi King Preparing for Shared Decision-Making

With pressure for democratic reform mounting in the monarchies of the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd has announced that the kingdom is preparing to resurrect a national consultative assembly.

The assembly--which would probably be appointed at first but eventually chosen by national election--would for the first time in recent years give Saudi Arabia’s increasingly restless intelligentsia and business community an official place in government decision-making.

The move comes just days after an unprecedented demonstration in the Saudi capital of Riyadh by 50 women who drove their cars in a convoy for more than half an hour to protest restrictions prohibiting women from driving. To the chagrin of a cadre of religious authorities who had demanded punishment for the demonstration, a committee of top legal and religious scholars subsequently announced that the women had violated no religious or civil laws.

Taken together, the two events represent a startling move toward opening a rigid political and social structure that for decades has been dominated by conservative Islamic tradition and the ruling Saud family.

At the same time, however, Saudi officials cautioned privately that no time has been set for appointment of the consultative assembly, and many predicted a backlash from Saudi Arabia’s conservative majority against a whole series of reforms being advocated by the country’s liberal, largely Western-educated minority.

Pressures for democratic reform have been building steadily within the conservative regimes of the Middle East in recent years. But the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2 has propelled the process in the Persian Gulf, raising doubts about the ability of small, tightly controlled ruling families to guard against outside incursions and prompting questions in the West about the propriety of sending in troops to protect non-democratic governments.

In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia has been presented with the example of Kuwait, whose exiled ruling family announced that it was restoring the dissolved national assembly and whose refugee women, permitted to drive in Kuwait, have been caught driving on Saudi streets. American military women in uniform also have been permitted to drive military vehicles in Saudi Arabia.

A new openness has been building steadily in Saudi Arabia since the invasion, most readily apparent in the Saudi press, which has documented the military buildup here with relative freedom and, contrary to previous restrictions against criticizing Arab leaders, has unleashed a journalistic barrage against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Criticism of the Saudi regime is still forbidden, but Saudi newspapers were full of unusual banner headlines proclaiming “democracy” in Kuwait on the day after the Kuwaiti ruling family’s announcement.

In a meeting with Saudi editors Thursday night, King Fahd announced that he is reviewing final recommendations for a national consultative council and for a system of regional governing councils.

“I had announced on several previous occasions our determination to execute the important organization that we have seen will serve the general interest of the state and will help it in performing its duties while keeping pace with the comprehensive development the kingdom is going through,” the king said.

Now, a committee of “honest men of great responsibility and absolute dependability” are preparing a final draft proposal for the monarch’s review, the king said. “We will announce its implementation as soon as the final draft is completed,” he said.

Saudi Arabia had an advisory Majlis al Shura, or Shura Council, through the early days of the kingdom in the 1930s and had actively discussed resurrecting it in the early 1980s, until fallout from the Iranian revolution prompted a nervous monarchy to shelve the proposal. A gleaming new building for the proposed council still stands vacant in Riyadh.

“Any time you have a crisis, you tend to put off fiddling with your system,” explained one Saudi government official, who said officials are now confident about proposing an advisory council because of apparent widespread public support for the Saudi government’s handling of the new gulf crisis.

However, the official predicted that actual implementation of the council may be delayed because of opposition from traditional segments of Saudi society who favor the direct access to the king and local governors that they have enjoyed through the weekly majlis, in which any citizen can present grievances.

“Why would a person in his right mind go to his senator when he feels he can go to his king?” he said. “Most people will say, ‘We really don’t need it. The ones who are pushing for it are our Western-educated intellectuals who live in the cities and who don’t really represent Saudi Arabia.’ ”

Most of the pressure for creating a Shura Council has come from urban businessmen, academics and writers who insist they are not seeking a Western-style democracy in Saudi Arabia but who do want more voice in national decision-making.

“There is a whole different attitude now because of this crisis,” one political science professor in Riyadh said. “I think the government is feeling the seriousness of the whole thing. There will have to be a consultative council.”

An official who advocates more openness in government complained that the bureaucracy in Saudi Arabia has become too entrenched, with members of the royal family not accountable to the public for their decisions.

“I have too much authority,” he said in a recent interview. “I’m not accountable to anybody but my conscience.”

Although the king has not yet set a time for implementation of an advisory council, he added, “It’s a question of a few months, or a year or two, not a few years.”

The women’s demonstration in Riyadh this week has prompted many Saudis to predict that driving privileges for women may also be only a matter of time.

While driving through the capital city, the women, from some of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent families, were careful to wear the traditional black abaya and veil demanded by custom.

Police arrested them after about half an hour on the road. “The police stopped them because it was like seeing a pink elephant,” said one Saudi familiar with the demonstration. There is no specific law prohibiting Saudi women from driving, but Islamic tradition in the country prevents it and women are never issued a driver’s license.

Representatives of the religious police, officially known as the Committee for the Prevention of Vice and the Commendation of Virtue, demanded their detention. They also advised that husbands who knew about their wives’ conduct should divorce them because of their obvious inability to control them, or if they were unaware of their wives’ plans, they should punish them.

The women countered that with the possibility of impending war they could not in an emergency depend on their drivers, who might quickly flee. They insisted that they were not attempting to imitate American women but other Islamic women, such as the Kuwaitis, who have always been permitted to drive.

The brouhaha quickly reached King Fahd, who announced that the governor of Riyadh had appointed a committee of religious and legal scholars to look into the matter. The women had violated no civil laws or basic tenets of Islam, though they were advised not to repeat the activity.