Muhammad Al-Khazim

Al-Jazirah

 

HISTORICALLY speaking, the election experiment in the Kingdom was restricted to national universities prior to their cancellation. The experiment continued partially in various chambers of commerce and it took a step forward while taking another step back in our scientific and professional societies.



Most notably, we conducted the experiment in the municipality councils and football federations, assuming the municipality councils should be the first to be formed as a result of the popular vote. The elections took place in an atmosphere that caused a media uproar.



However, the importance of the municipality council elections was curtailed because the councils were given only marginal powers, in addition to constant delays in holding new elections. People became fed up waiting for the elections to take place and the whole scenario turned out to be a farce. Not only this, but it became a reason to criticize the Kingdom’s election experiment.



The moment Shoura Council or regional council elections are proposed, people jokingly ask: Will it be like the municipal council elections? People have not discerned anything from the results of municipal council elections and they have become ineffective lists of names according to critics who cannot be bothered to identify the shortcomings, which are essentially in the functions and powers of the council, and not in the electoral system or in voters themselves.



The football federation elections were the most ripe as they were carried out under the supervision of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). The competition in the elections was stiff and the federation was constantly under the scrutiny of football critics, fanatics and fans. Irrespective of the details of its daily functions, this federation and its humility from the perspective of the media sowed the seed for the institutional organization for Saudi sports. There were hopes that this would be the beginning and other sports federations, such as the Olympic Committee and sports clubs, would follow suit. These are parties concerned with the country’s youth. Through sports, the young generations can gain an understanding of organized national work and the mechanisms for respecting the ballot box. We used to hope that this would happen, but it appears that the force of winds will cause the downfall of this elected federation so that those waging a war against elections will emerge victorious.



The pressures on the elected leaders of the federation exceeded the sports fanaticism we see in our stadiums. This has caused some officials to joke about their financial transactions during a football championship in which the national team as well as the country’s sports federation was represented. The moral destruction of the elected federation has allowed groups abroad to take jabs at the federation, something they would not have dared to do earlier.



These are examples of how we dealt with a real first experiment of democracy in our country. It remains unclear whether we are simply not good at holding elections and incapable of giving the election process sufficient time to mature or whether we want to wage a war against the concept of holding elections itself.



Not only this, but some people believe that we offer sacrifices for the failure of our election experiece and prepare the ground for the rejection of any future experiments in an attempt to convince people that we are different from the advanced nations of the world.



I might excuse the man on the street and the sportsman who represents the sports fanatics in the stadium, but I am astonished at the silence of the intellectual or his participation in the attempts to stifle every election experience starting with the municipality councils, professional commissions, literary clubs and sports clubs, among others. The voices speaking with awareness, defending the experience and supporting it have disappeared. All have become executioners and critics and participants in destroying the experience and marginalizing it.



Where have the preachers of culture, modernization and development gone? Why doesn’t our strategic thinking tolerate temporary shortcomings? Why do we pass judgment on elections in our country as failures merely because of difficulties faced by a council or federation or an individual in the initial experience?