Last night Jordan TV had a special live transmission of a public meeting bwteen the Prime Minister and the angry citizens of Zarqa' complaining about prices, jobs and wages (while all the same affirming their attachment to the Hashemite throne). They are all scrambling to position themsleves and try to forestall for the coming tsunami...
For the last ten days, Saudi newspapers have been obsessively relaying speeches of Saudi Minister of Labor Adel al Faqih and reporting on all his (suddenly revealed) new economic plans and policies that he alleges will solve the problems of rising unemployment, inflation, and poverty. Al Faqih went so far as to promise to eradicate all restrictions on women’s employment, something he later had to rescind due to opposition from many sectors of society.
Riyadh feels a little less stale since the Tunisian people toppled their dictator-president Zine El Abidine Bin Ali on January 15, 2011. In cafes, restaurants, and salons (majalis), friends and colleagues greet me with a smug smile, congratulations, and a ‘u’balna kulna (may we all be next). On my daily afternoon walks, I overhear Saudis of all ages and walks of life analyzing the events that led to the overthrow of the Tunisian regime. Everywhere I go, people are hypothesizing on whether the same could happen to “them,” referring to the possibility of a Saudi Arabia not headed by the Al Sauds. Although most concur that it is highly unlikely, they are nonetheless more convinced than ever of the power of the people to bring about change. They know that they can no longer sit back and wait for their government to hand them their basic political, economic and to some extent, even human rights.
It is not surprising that Saudis are jumping on the bandwagon of optimism which has swept the Arab world in the last two weeks. That they are expressing their discontent and criticism of the Saudi government in public spaces, however, is. Last week, several “gatherings” (tajamu’at) took place at government institutions in several Saudi cities. Groups of 70-100 Saudi men (no exact numbers are available) peacefully stood in front of different municipalities as well as the ministries of Education and Labor. The men were silently protesting their deteriorating living conditions, rising unemployment (in one of the strongest economies in the world), and increasingly corrupt and stagnant bureaucracy. These public protests have received little press coverage, but the fact that they have occurred for several days speaks volumes as to the increasing willingness of Saudi citizens to challenge the Saudi regime.
At the Ministry of Labor, the protesters demanded solutions to the discrimination against Saudi nationals in the hiring practices of private companies and called for the serious implementation of Saudification in the private sector. Begun in the mid-1990s, Saudification is a policy that aims to increase the numbers of Saudi men and women in the workforce. By law, private sector companies are required to hire 30% (2006) of their employees from the Saudi labor market. Most, however, have found legal loopholes to evade this law and continue to have very few Saudis on board, and mostly in low-paying jobs. Saudi Arabia today has a 15-20% unemployment rate yet it is host to 8-9 million foreign employees. At the protests in front of the Ministry of Education, Saudi teachers demanded their long-awaited raises, salaries that matched their grade qualifications, and a freeze on the closing of educational programs. Finally, those who gathered at the municipalities were tired of years of waiting for their land grants to be processed and demanded more efficient case processing and communication. In all three instances, the Saudi men (always men) called for transparency and accountability in dealing with their cases and an end to the very pervasive problem of wasta (favoritism and nepotism) within the Saudi Arabian private and public sectors.
The Saudi government prohibits all public gatherings and punishes them by lashings and a prison term that ranges from several months to two years. Saudi media outlets usually report on public gatherings in ways that focus on their consequences in order to deter further acts of protestation. In the last few days, Saudi media have reported on two of the four Saudi nationals who have burned themselves in the Eastern and Southern regions of the Kingdom in protest of economic and political corruption. However, they have remained largely silent on last week’s “gatherings.” But if the past 10 days of government-controlled Saudi media is any indication, the Al Saud regime is very nervous. So far, the ruling members of Al Saud have issued different excuses for hosting Bin Ali despite the continued protestation of Saudi citizens and citizens of other Arab states. In the beginning, newspapers justified hosting Bin Ali by stressing the Kingdom’s long tradition of hospitality, claiming that the government is obligated to welcome everyone (completely evading the fact that Saudi Arabia has the strictest travel requirements in the world). When that was not enough, Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal added that during his tenure in Saudi Arabia, Bin Ali would not be allowed to partake in any political or other activities that could harm the Tunisian people. This part of his speech was repeatedly aired on local Saudi channels for days. More recently, the government announced that they hosted Bin Ali to spare the Tunisian people further harm and violence. In other words, by agreeing to welcome him in the Royal Guest Palace in Jeddah, they saved the Tunisian people from their dictator. The irony of this narrative has not escaped most Saudis, who continue to be ashamed of their authoritarian government’s unabashed support for one of the most brutal oppressors in the region.
For the last ten days, Saudi newspapers have been obsessively relaying speeches of Saudi Minister of Labor Adel al Faqih and reporting on all his (suddenly revealed) new economic plans and policies that he alleges will solve the problems of rising unemployment, inflation, and poverty. Al Faqih went so far as to promise to eradicate all restrictions on women’s employment, something he later had to rescind due to opposition from many sectors of society. His speeches were full of promises of reform and change that he claimed will actually improve the lives of all Saudis. King Abdullah’s New York speech last week was even more inflated. In it, he referred to the Saudi people as his bloodline, again positing himself as the benevolent father of the nation. (See my previous "It's Not The Morality Police, Stupid" www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/466/it%E2%80%99s-not-the-morality-police-stupid). In this role, he comforted his children that he will return home soon to serve them. In what sounded more like satire, King Abdullah promised prosperity, development, gender equality and peace, all reforms that will, this time, really touch the lives of all Saudis. The government’s performance of these empty promises, which are too little, too late, must and will become more amplified as more Saudis join silent protests, write critical opinion editorials, immolate themselves, and proudly watch as days of public anger spread from Tunis, to Amman, to Cairo.
The ruling members of the Al Saud are not concerned with being overthrown anytime soon, although the fact that these acts of opposition coincide with internal family struggles over succession is slightly inconvenient. That said, the Al Sauds are extremely allergic to any kind of public criticism and action against their rule, persons, or what they consider to be their country. They would rather deal with such incidents on an individual basis and behind closed doors, mainly through coercion. The ruling members often convey this stance through the media they control tightly. In the last few days, there have been several articles on the “open door policy” of the ruling family, what many “experts” in the US refer to as “Saudi democracy”. It is true that many of the top ruling members of the Al Saud family receive people in their offices (diwans) on a daily basis, listen to their complaints and in many cases, provide financial or moral support. But for the most part, only those who already have some connections (wasta) can actually make it to these royal diwans. The remaining 20 million Saudis, clearly, cannot access this avenue of “democracy”. The government has also resorted to other means to deter Saudi citizens from organizing protests. Local talk shows, for example, have hosted several prominent Saudi sociologists from the King Saud University in Riyadh, all of whom spoke against the “phenomenon of gatherings,” denigrating it as uncivilized, negative, and above all, illegal. These experts posed public gatherings as even more of an affront in light of the fact that the government has a so-called “open door” policy that in reality is very much tightly shut in the face of those who need it.
If the comments section of every Saudi newspaper is any indication, average Saudi men and women are angry and are becoming increasingly outspoken about their grievances. In the last two weeks alone, citizens have been posting comments that are directly and sharply critical of the Saudi government, its corruption, theft, and control of political and economic resources. Most of the latest comments reference the Tunisian revolution and the importance of people fighting for their own rights. The groundbreaking events in Tunis and Egypt have empowered many in Saudi Arabia, such as the brave men who protested at the government ministries and municipalities. Or those who have called for a major demonstration in Jeddah today and a total strike there next week to protest the corruption that has led to the flooding of the city for the second year in a row. Saudi Arabia might be far from having its own “day of anger,” let alone a revolution, but it takes so much less to trigger the anxieties of the Saudi dictators.
