A Saudi Prince With an Unconventional Idea: Elections
The New York Times
November 28, 2001
By DOUGLAS JEHL
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 27 — A
prominent member of Saudi Arabia's royal
family called today for a transformation that would
bring elections, "the faster the better," to a kingdom
whose only bow to democracy has been the
establishment of an appointed advisory council.
Prince Walid bin Talal, a billionaire investor, said in
an interview here that he was addressing the
politically taboo subject to augment what he called
intensive discussions within the royal family about
what Saudi Arabia could be doing better to address
domestic discontent — particularly in the wake of
the Sept. 11 attacks, in which 15 of 19 hijackers
were Saudis.
"If people speak more freely and get involved more
in the political process, you can really contain them
and make them part of the process," Prince Walid
said.
The remarks were unusually candid in a kingdom
that almost always maintains a guarded public face,
particularly on questions of internal decisions and
any kind of political liberalization.
They echoed loud but private calls by Saudi liberals, who have begun to speculate
that the widespread Saudi participation in the Sept. 11 attacks was at least in part a
consequence of a closed political system that allows little room for political
expression.
For most of his career, Prince Walid, 47, has shunned a political role, focusing on a
career in investing that has made him one of the world's richest businessmen. But he
waded into political controversy last month, when he offered $10 million to the City
of New York for victims of the World Trade Center disaster but also issued a press
release saying American policy in the Middle East had helped to fan extremism.
The suggestion that United States policy might have been partly to blame for the
attack inflamed anger among some Americans, including Mayor Rudolph W.
Giuliani, who rejected Prince Walid's gift.
In the interview, Prince Walid defended Saudi Arabia's monarchy as popular and
resilient, and said he had quietly favored an eventual shift toward some democracy
long before Sept. 11. But he also made clear his view that terrorism and its roots
remained a subject of deep concern within the ruling Saud family.
"What I'm saying could be too much for Saudi Arabia," he said, "but I'm speaking
my mind."
As laid down by King Fahd and his predecessors, the official Saudi line has long
shunned democracy as an unwelcome imposition. It was not until 1992 that King
Fahd even formed the consultative council, whose members are appointed in a
mechanism that its chairman, Sheik Muhammad al-Jubeir, defended in an interview
this week as far superior to popular elections.
In calling for change, Prince Walid made clear that what he had in mind was limited.
He said the 120-member council should be chosen in elections that would be open,
at least at first, to men only. The approach would be roughly similar to the one in
place in Kuwait, which has had an elected Parliament since 1961.
Two of Saudi Arabia's other neighbors, Bahrain and Qatar, have also promised to
hold elections by the end of next year. It is a sign of growing democratic
experimentation in the Persian Gulf region, in which almost all power still lies in the
hands of kings, emirs, sheiks and sultans.
But Prince Walid's remarks were extraordinarily bold by the standards of Saudi
Arabia, where criticism of the royal family is prohibited — and where some officials
have continued to dismiss as unproven the idea of Saudi involvement in the Sept. 11
attacks, for which the United States holds the Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden
responsible.
"We should not take this matter for granted, the loyalty of our people," Prince Walid
said. "People are very loyal as Saudis, very loyal. For sure they don't want bin
Laden and the Taliban types to rule here, because they see how backward they are
in Afghanistan.
"But we should really let them talk more freely. We should not be worried about that
at all."
Advocates of greater political openness have argued that it would force Saudi
Arabia to deal more quickly with internal problems, including a high rate of
unemployment, while allowing moderates to drown out extremist voices like those of
Mr. bin Laden, which they say thrive in a closed society.
Prince Walid has defended the remarks in his news release accompanying the offer
of a donation to New York, which accused the United States of a lack of
evenhandedness in the Middle East peace efforts. Spurned by Mr. Giuliani, he said
he had divided the $10 million into donations in equal parts to Afghan refugees and
"the Palestinian cause."
At the same time, he said his calls for changes in Saudi Arabia were a second step in
trying to call attention to what both countries might do better.
A nephew of King Fahd, and also of Crown Prince Abdullah, the country's
day-to-day ruler, Prince Walid is one of scores of grandsons of Saudi Arabia's
founder, King Abdel Aziz. His own father, Prince Talal, who is widely regarded as
one of the family's more liberal members, has long been sidelined from any role in
government, but he has said that Prince Walid ought not to be excluded from the line
of royal succession.
In the interview today, Prince Walid sounded another populist note by saying he
favored an end to the system of royal allowances that provide even the youngest
newborn prince with thousands of dollars a month. He said he donates his family's
own relatively modest allowance of $180,000 a year to charity.
He said the idea of moving toward limited democracy was being "openly discussed"
within the royal family, even though it was almost never mentioned in Saudi Arabia's
government-owned or monitored newspapers and television.
"We're still in the process of saying yes or no," he said. He did not say what
positions were being taken by other members of the family. The orthodox view was
expressed this week by Sheik Jubeir, the chairman of the appointive council, in a
separate interview. "In our opinion the people who would elect the members would
not choose the right people," he said. "So therefore we prefer to appoint and to
choose, but within certain specifications and the rules."
In a conversation, another grandson of King Abdel Aziz also referred to intense
discussions about what if any changes within the royal family Saudi Arabia ought to
consider in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"You'd be surprised at the issues that are discussed," said Prince Bandar bin Khalid,
36, an investment manager, "and obviously debate increases in times of crisis, like
now and the gulf war."
But Prince Bandar told a visitor to his home late one recent evening, "It's something
for us, the leadership, to discuss and for society to discuss, but it is not something
for outsiders to impose on us or to tell us what we should be thinking."
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