Qataris decide whether to end limited voting for legislative seats in shadow of US election

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Qatar opened a snap poll Tuesday to decide whether to end limited voting for legislative seats, a measure likely to pass and end its short-lived experiment in electing members of the country’s Shura Advisory Council.

The vote began as the world’s attention focused on the US presidential election, with even Qatar’s state-funded satellite news network Al Jazeera offering brief acknowledgments of the vote in between coverage of the US and Middle East wars. Although Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, announced last month that a vote would take place, it was only on Sunday that the authorities announced the date of the poll.

Voting will take place until 19:00 (1600 GMT) and results are expected on Wednesday. All Qatari employees in the country were also given permission to leave work starting at 11am to vote.

Qatar’s state news agency described the vote as “an enthusiastic atmosphere and a historic moment, clearly confirming everyone’s desire to make this national holiday a success.”

The vote will “strengthen the social fabric in the most beautiful image and form, which frankly represents an important stage in the victorious march of the country and its national unity,” the news agency added.

Qatar first introduced plans for legislative elections in its 2003 constitution, but authorities have repeatedly delayed implementation of the vote. Finally, the country held elections for two-thirds of the Shura Council, which drafts laws, approves state budgets and advises the ruler, in October 2021.

The election came after Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates ended their boycott of Qatar which tore apart the Arab states of the Gulf. He also came the year before Qatar is hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cupan event that drew intense attention from the West to the country’s treatment of foreign workers and its system of government.

Qatar remains an important nation to the West because it has hosted and aided the Taliban the chaotic 2021 NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan and like a mediator as the Israel-Hamas war rages in the Gaza Strip and extended to Lebanon.

But the election has created problems in the energy-rich nation. The electoral law distinguishes between born and naturalized Qatari citizens and prohibits the latter from participating in elections. Human Rights Watch described the system as “discriminatory”, excluding thousands of Qataris from running for office or voting. The disqualifications sparked minor protests that led to several arrests.

Announcing the vote on the constitutional change, Sheikh Tamim said: “The competition between candidates for membership in the Shura Council took place within families and tribes and there are different views on the repercussions of such a competition on our norms, traditions, such as and like conventional social institutions and their cohesion’.

“The contest assumes an identity-based character that we are not prepared to handle, with potential complications over time that we would avoid,” he added.

The vote marks yet another setback in the hereditary-ruled Gulf Arab states’ halting moves to embrace representative government, following efforts by the United States to push harder for democratic reforms in the Middle East after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Hopes for democracy in the region have also risen since the arab spring of 2011.

In May, the ruler of oil-rich Kuwait dissolved his country’s parliament for up to four years. While the Kuwaiti parliament had struggled, it represented the Gulf Arab state’s freest legislative body and could challenge the country’s rulers.