Wheel of reform turns slowly in Saudi Arabia

King Abdullah leads conservative kingdom to path of reform at slow pace one year after taking helm.

By Lydia Georgi - RIYADH

Since ascending the throne of Saudi Arabia a year ago, King Abdullah has shepherded the oil powerhouse on the path of reform and encouraged women's participation in public life, activists say.

But much remains to be done to establish a "civil society" in the conservative Muslim kingdom, said a leading reformist who spent 17 months in jail for demanding a constitutional monarchy.
"We don't need to reinvent the wheel. All we need to do is steer it through the valleys and dunes of a desert society," Abdullah al-Hamed said.

Hamed, one of three reformists pardoned and released from jail by Abdullah one week after he became king on August 1, 2005, said the 83-year-old monarch was "undoubtedly sincere" in seeking reform, but "there are powerful elements in his entourage who are obstructing change."
As de facto ruler since 1995, Abdullah gave the go-ahead for a "national dialogue" and for landmark male-only elections to pick half the members of municipal councils before becoming king on the death of his half-brother Fahd.

"Over the past year, there have been individual moves toward reform, like our release. But apart from the establishment of a second human rights watchdog, little has been done in terms of institutional reforms," Hamed said.

"We need to take steps toward establishing a constitutional court, a judicial body that would hold officials accountable, and an elected parliament which would legislate and have a say in appointing judges to guarantee the independence of the judiciary," said Hamed, an academic and writer.

Measures must also be introduced to ensure social justice, "such as providing health and unemployment benefits and regulating the allocation of public land."

Abdullah has toured the Gulf kingdom in recent months, launching development projects in remote and disadvantaged regions to show they would get their share of the country's vast wealth.

Moves to liberalize the economy started before Riyadh joined the World Trade Organization in December have also continued.

Hamed was one of 34 activists calling themselves "advocates of an Islamic civil society" who wrote to the king on June 7 hailing his efforts to introduce reforms and safeguard public funds, but urging him to move faster.

"While thanking you for those steps, we hope to see more and quicker (moves) toward effective constitutional reformist steps in order to ward off the internal and external dangers threatening the country," they wrote.

Saudi Arabia has been battling a wave of violence by suspected Al-Qaeda extremists for more than three years.

"The failure to usher in a civil society plays into the hands of the proponents of violence," Hamed warned.

Hamed said he and fellow activists successfully lobbied the appointed Shura (consultative) Council in May to reconsider proposed legislation that will regulate the establishment of civil associations in order to ensure their independence.

"We urge King Abdullah to communicate directly with reformists, not through bureaucratic agencies which might filter things before they reach him," he said.

Nadia Bakhurji, who became the first woman to be elected to the 10-member board of the Saudi Council of Engineers last December, said King Abdullah had over the past year backed "women's participation in economy-building".

"He is helping us by creating a positive environment as opposed to a resisting and anti-women environment," she said.

"When the king supports the participation of women in economy-building, there is a domino effect -- corporations and smaller businesses will be encouraged to hire and train women," said the 39-year-old interior architect.

Her election to the engineers' board came one month after two Saudi women scored an unprecedented victory in chamber of commerce polls in the Red Sea city of Jeddah -- a big feat in a country where women remain subject to a host of restrictions and have to cover from head to toe in public.

Bakhurji said that while it had taken her 17 years as a practicing architect to win "recognition", she now heads a women's committee within the engineers' council that has task forces across the country seeking to promote "acceptance of, and participation by, women engineers".
Bakhurji, who attempted to run in the municipal elections before the government declared them off limits to women, said the next step for Saudi women was to come forward in the 2009 local polls.

"Women have to be pro-active. When a group of women announced they would be candidates in last year's elections, we put the government on the spot. They couldn't ban us, so they said they were not ready logistically, let's do it in 2009," she said.

"If we get women into the municipal councils, we will have a stronger argument to get them into the Shura Council -- which already has a number of female consultants -- within five to six years, and maybe have a woman minister within 10 years," Bakhurji said.

"If things continue to move at the present pace, I think my time frame will be cut in half. But I am being conservative."


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