The recent Cabinet reshuffle can be seen as structural rather than reflecting a change in names. This should mean more responsibilities for those chosen to serve in the new government and provide a strong motive for them to ensure improved performance. There should be no more excuses that the powers of government departments overlap or that more time is needed to fix things in departments that have resisted change for too long and failed to adapt.
The two most important tools for any reform are restructuring, including the modernization of laws and regulations, and the people responsible for the reforms. These should be qualified, honest and trustworthy, and they should prove that they are capable of bringing change. The people in charge will account, perhaps, for two-thirds of the success of the reforms.
Ministers should be the first to free themselves from the complications of bureaucracy and to apply creative methods at work. The concerns of the public should be their top priority, and they must ensure that everybody receives justice and fair treatment. It is, moreover, a responsibility for which they should bear the consequences. This is what the rulers and the people expect of them.
Those who theorize and lecture about freedom tend to evaluate reshuffles based on the number of ministers who do not belong to the royal family. For them the numbers are an indication of the margin of freedom and reform. But they forget the basic fact that what matters in the end are the results and not the shape. Saudi Arabia’s status and circumstances are different from those in other countries, whether East or West, and this is something that has to be taken into consideration when judging matters here.
Over the years the ministers who belong to the royal family were the most productive. They spent long hours listening to and addressing people’s concerns and reconciling different parties. They use their own money to help the needy, they forgive and show mercy, they meet people with a smile while others frown at those who come to see them. Most importantly, they fear God, and they know that one day they will be held accountable for their actions and that history will judge them.
People don’t want the impossible; all they want is to see their concerns addressed. They want an end to nepotism and favoritism and they want to see those who take bribes, embezzle public money and are negligent toward their duties to be punished.
People want the ministers to hire honest, hardworking assistants and aides. It pains them to see their rulers and emirs receiving hundreds of citizens every week at their courts while at least half of their complaints could have been settled by the ministries and other government departments before reaching the highest echelons of power. This waste of people’s precious time has to stop.
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(Muhammad Al-Shibani is a Saudi writer based in Jeddah.)
Arab News Features 9 May 2003
