Bold words indeed. And you would think that UAE, which prides itself on being far more socially and economically advanced than its neighbors, would have done something about political reform too. The truth of the matter is quite the opposite. While the other five GCC states – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia – have held elections and referenda to improve political participation, the UAE has lagged behind. Admittedly, there is no pressing need for these reforms – the rulers are popular, and citizens do not want for much. Nevertheless, the first signs of change came last year when the ruler of Sharjah promised to hold elections to his emirate’s municipal council. This was welcomed the next day by neighboring Ajman, which promised to consider the idea itself. The emirate of Ras al Khaimah promised to improve participation as well. Nothing came of any of the promises made, however.

On December 2, the UAE’s national day, the country’s president announced plans for the first national elections, with the press hailing him for having revolutionized the nation. (Note how the image that the UAE has always had some form of a democracy is conveyed through the quote “This is not new. People have been doing this through the Ruler's majlis that is open all the time for presenting opinions and ideas.")

The actual proposal was rather underwhelming. The elections were to be held to a pre-existing consultative (as opposed to legislative) body called the Federal National Council (FNC). This body had very little prominence for a long time now, and despite a prominent UAE businessman being appointed as a new minister to supervise its activities, little seems likely to come out of these elections. Why?

Well, aside from remaining a purely consultative body, only 20 of the 40 members will be actually be elected, with the remainder still to be appointed directly by the rulers of the seven emirates making up the UAE federation. The really disheartening thing is that there will be only a couple of thousand voters. And how will they be chosen? The selfsame rulers will appoint them. Will these voters be representative of the population, or at least the citizenry? No, even the local press admits that they will be “mostly dignitaries, Shaikhs and prominent figures in the society.” Sounds suspiciously as if the rulers want to call upon their friends to tell them to vote for predesignated candidates.

Given that the body is consultative and half-appointed, you’d think that they could have at least had a wider voter base. Other Gulf countries started off with small electorates and expanded participation from there (Oman, in particular, comes to mind) but one would have expected the UAE to have gone further given that it is always trying to go further than its neighbors, and even ultraconservative Saudi Arabia has had a head start on it by virtue of having held municipal elections. Political participation will undoubtedly increase at some point, but it looks like this will be a slow process.

How slow? Well, a month ago, the smallest of the seven emirates, Umm al Quwain, finished appointing its local council, which was to elect its 2 elected FNC members. This should have been a non-event, yet it merited a front page story in the local press headlined ‘A dream nearing fulfilment.’ Perhaps the editor was being sarcastic to the point of being subversive. The truth came out two weeks later in this story. Umm al Quwain was the only emirate to bother to appoint voters (there’s an oxymoron for you) at all; the others hadn’t bothered, and had missed a deadline and an extension, while ignoring reminders. Meaning that the rulers have been too scared to personally handpick non-representative voters for half the seats to a powerless body. Clearly, meaningful democracy in the UAE is some way off.