A former Shoura Council member recently said something of great interest. It can be construed to mean that foreign trips made by council members to visit different parliaments and law-making bodies in the world are intended to introduce others to our experience and convince them that ours is the best model. The gentleman criticized those who criticize us as sticklers who know we are right but refuse to admit it.
What I understood from what was said by the honorable member was that the visits were not intended to have our people benefit from anyone else’s experiences but rather to make them benefit from our experience. Since the member was convinced that we are right and the others are wrong, what is the point of going anywhere to learn anything? We are sure that we are right and they are sure that they are right and there is no cooperation or discussion about anything.
When I read the article, I thought the member was expressing his personal view which did not necessarily reflect that of the Shoura Council. I was, therefore, completely amazed by the comments from another former member who also talked about the visits. The member was Dr. Hashim Abdo Hashim, editor in chief of Okaz newspaper, who recently published a series of articles on his experience as a Shoura Council member. What he said was astonishing! He said the visits which cost a great deal of money and require considerable effort to arrange — to say nothing of the time involved — had no benefit. In short, the visits are useless.
Dr. Hashim attributed the failure to several things — notably our idea that we, as Saudis, have our own special status and that the experiments of other countries, whether Arab or foreign, are different from ours and thus do not suit us. I wish he had stopped there since that is bad enough but he didn’t. He went on to add that the Shoura Council has a firm conviction that other parliaments are not serious when it comes to how their work is conducted. This implies that of all the countries in the world, we are the only ones who treat parliamentary work seriously!
Dr. Hashim added that after each visit or meeting with foreign delegates, the council members compared our experiment to others with emphasis on the special status of our Shoura experiment and the number of sessions it holds compared to those held by the British, German, Pakistani or Moroccan parliaments. No comparison was ever made between the nature of topics discussed or the influence that other parliaments could make on the political, social, economic or other areas. Even when the Shoura Council members were asked about core issues such as the composition of the council, its jurisdiction and the role of women, they tended to give answers that were seldom feasible or convincing.
Dr. Hashim concluded that our Shoura Council members have closed their minds and refused to see anything beneficial in anybody else’s parliamentary experiences. If what he says is true, then we are faced with a serious problem in the way the council thinks and acts. It is a problem that demands to be addressed.
Arab News From the Local Press 25 February 2003
