JEDDAH, 6 November 2006 — An hour-and-a-half interview with Shoura Council Chairman Dr. Saleh Bin-Humaid on Al-Ekhbariya satellite channel a few days ago touched on a number of important issues. Some of the issues were the council’s rights and duties, procedures and committees, reports and recommendations.
Two unexpected subjects were also dealt with in the interview: The state budget and women’s rights. When asked why the Shoura Council does not review the budget and how it is distributed and used, Bin-Humaid said: “The council has submitted a request to review the budget.” There was no follow-up question or further clarification.
Many writers have brought up the issue of the budget and suggested that the Shoura Council be able to review it in order to increase public confidence, transparency and accountability. During the days following the interview, few newspapers, except for Al-Watan, commented on it.
Al-Watan’s Abdul Mohsin Al-Rashoud wrote that a review was a “necessity for the council in order to evaluate matters from all sides and identify administrative corruption and address it.”
When contacted by Arab News, Shoura Council members refused to elaborate on the budget issue. They said that what the president had said was sufficient. “There cannot be real democracy without transparency and accountability. One of the key issues that the Shoura Council should deliberate is the budget,” a government employee told Arab News.
The other controversial topic in the interview was whether women have their rights in Saudi Arabia. Bin-Humaid said: “Absolutely. Women in Saudi Arabia have all their rights. Talk of them being deprived of their rights is perhaps true in some individual cases but those cannot be generalized.”
Even when the interviewer mentioned the difficulties women face in accessing officials, documents and services from public institutions, the Shoura chairman insisted that those are only a few cases.
As for including women in the Shoura Council, he said that was up to the king.
Al-Rashoud commented in his Al-Watan article that when the chairman was asked why the council did not support the Labor Ministry’s decision to employ women in some jobs and confront opposition, the chairman said that many ministries make decisions that do not please citizens and the council was not concerned with supporting those decisions.
“Where is the observer’s role of the council that Bin-Humaid referred to earlier in the interview? Why doesn’t the council present its opinion and recommendation on an important issue that affects the Saudi family? And why doesn’t the council participate in formulating these important decisions before they are made public?” asked Al-Rashoud.
Appointing women to the Shoura Council is up to the king, and Dr. Hatoon Al-Fassi, associate professor of history at King Saud University, does not believe that petitioning for women’s rights to be in the council would be effective.
“The media is the means of bringing attention to the need for women’s representation in the council, especially since nothing in Islam prevents it and the council’s building is equipped with short-circuit TV,” she said.
As for women having all rights and that the cases reported in the media are only exceptions, she said: “That is Bin-Humaid’s personal opinion and it does not necessarily reflect reality. Such rhetoric is for outside consumption and is not useful for domestic consumption. I consider the stories we read in the papers are an indication, not of individual cases, but of the larger problem and the defect in several institutions, especially the judiciary,” said Dr. Al-Fassi.
