The peninsula Newspaper
Wednesday, 09 November 2011
The beginning of the countdown for elections to choose members of the Legislative Council i.e. Qatari Shura Council, is the most important step in the process of political reforms in Qatar after achieving reforms in economy, education and development. Reports suggest that the economy has achieved an annual growth rate of 15.7 percent during the period from 2006 to 2010. These are indications which tell us that if Qatar succeeded in the application of the methodology of democracy and economy, it will transform into a global unique model and not a regional, Arab and Gulf model exclusively.
The question of democracy and development in the developing world engaged the French thinker and sociologist “Alan Turin” in dealing with problems and challenges in this regard. Is it true that the economic growth in the undeveloped countries requires the placement of democracy and giving the state and authority all powers to lead the march? Turin on the basis of the historical experience finds “that the democracy and development cannot afford to live only in conjunction with each other. If we define the development as a political measure for the tensions that arise between the investment and economic growth and community participation, the democracy becomes a condition for this reflection and does not come back just a result of it” The experience of the regimes that gained independence after the World War II is a proof of that as it separated the development and democracy. The first dominated at the expense of the other and it ended because of the failure of development which eliminated the democratic forces. The problem faced by most of the Arab countries, especially the Gulf countries that depend on a main yielding source which is the oil, is the imposition of the trade, marketing and economic culture, provision of the consuming values on the democratic values, freedoms, political and constitutional reforms and popular participation and strengthening the role of civil society institutions which makes them enter the long lasting political struggle. It may lead to confrontation and the elimination of the economy, development and the entire state. These are the signs which we are seeing today in Bahrain, Kuwait and experienced in Libya in all their manifestations with the end of the Colonel in a sanitation tunnel by those who he considered as “rats.”
Secondly, democracy is not a tradition and it is not something that can be imported from abroad and planted in our desert soil, but it is a reality in all its manifestations and specificities. It is a culture which must be identified with the community and its members and it should grow through the dialectical and dynamic interaction between public and private and at local, regional and global levels. The democratic process is not paved with flowers and pure good intentions, which lead us to heaven. The process of building the state on the foundations and principles of democracy, participation, interaction and the difference of views and orientations is a very slow and gradual process which is full of faltering and hesitant steps, retreats and compromise and it takes time which may be long in order to achieve the desired results on the ground. Now Turin explains that the democracy is model which contains several elements of society, right, economy, individual and knowledge which is interrelated and interactive based on the separation between political society and civil society where there is no value of the electoral process, if the same is not accompanied by freedom at large scale in order to gather, express and plan the sustainable human development and real political reform. Turin, in his book (What is democracy) stressed the social and cultural content of democracy which reduces the power of the state, freedom of self, way of its exercise, defense of diversity within the human culture and respect for the projects and aspirations of the individual and the group, which make the democratic culture based on the key principle that is “Combining unity and diversity, and freedom and unification, provision of institutional conditions that allow the person to do with the society”. This means: the resistance to control, self love and recognition of others. The most important challenges faced by the Qatari society lie in the problem of lack of attendance and mass action in the field of local politics in particular and the regional and international in general. The society did not learn that the debates and discussion in the open and space and different from the surroundings in which it lives, though it is a political observer of first class and from its land the first satellite news channel of Arab political is aired. The public is absent “as a political player and it does not participate in the political process due to the absence of umbrella and cuddling, especially associations and institutions that build and establish a civil society, which means that the need has become urgent and an obligation for all to allow for the establishment of institutions, NGOs and civil societies in order to avoid failures in the democratic process and engage in conflicts and self-interests through the imposition of a different reality for the desired development and required change and reform.
The countdown for the legislative elections in Qatar in (2013), requires the construction of a different political structure, change in the current and prevailing political culture in the society, adoption of a new social culture based on the work on the constitutional, political, and developmental front and democratic practice, strengthening the values of dialogue, tolerance, justice, respect for the rules of participation, equal opportunities and equality, respect for the political game, right of difference and the rotation of power and chair through the ballot box, acceptance of the opposing opinion, devoting the confidence in the role of institutions and civil society, sense of political capacity and efficiency, acknowledgment of the values of transparency and accountability and strengthening the culture of democratic values and principles versus the inherited the authoritarian culture. The time of change has come in the Shura Council, which was first formed in 1972. It should transform after all these decades of certain to an elected one and it is a challenge that requires the community and its members to get ready to take up the big responsibility entrusted to them. Is everyone ready for the next stage?
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