Qatar will organize a referendum on abandoning the elections to the Shura Council. news from the world

From its perspective, Qatar saw the 2021 vote as likely to exacerbate tensions between tribes and families in the country, months after the end of a diplomatic crisis between Doha and four Arab countries.

According to a transcript published by Qatar's state news agency, we are all one family in Qatar, Sheikh Tamim said. The competition between candidates for the Shura Council took place within families and tribes, and there are different views on the impact of this competition on our norms, traditions, as well as on traditional social institutions and their coordination.

Amir adds: Competition is identity-based that we are not equipped to manage, which can complicate the situation over time, something we would prefer to avoid.

The country's electoral law distinguishes between natural-born and naturalized Qatari citizens and prohibits the latter from participating in elections. Human Rights Watch described the system as discriminatory, preventing thousands of Qataris from running and voting. The disqualifications sparked minor tribal protests that led to several arrests.

Qatar first introduced plans for legislative elections in its 2003 constitution, but authorities have repeatedly postponed the vote. The country finally voted to elect two-thirds of the Shura Council in October 2021, after a boycott of Qatar by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates split the Gulf states.

The vote also comes almost a year before Qatar hosts the 2022 FIFA World Cup – an event that has drawn intense Western scrutiny over both Doha's treatment of foreign workers and its management. Qatar remains an important country for the West, having hosted the Taliban and helping facilitate NATO's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, and as a mediator on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and expansion in Lebanon.

Qatar, like other Gulf states, is ruled by a hereditary leader who has the final say on how the country is run. Before the oil industry swept into the Persian Gulf and overthrew centuries of rule, rulers were guided by consensus among their people.

The United States began pushing for democracy in the Middle East after the Cold War, balancing its relationships with long-time client states, cultivating competition with the Soviet Union and support for Israel. This pressure intensified under then-President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks, which led to Gulf states taking tentative steps toward some form of representation.

The U.S. State Department did not respond to a request for comment on the statement from Qatar, which is home to the massive Al-Udeid Air Base, which houses the forward headquarters of the U.S. military's Central Command.

Governance by consensus is something Gulf rulers still try to maintain today, even as some of them sit on the vast oil and gas riches that have transformed their countries.

In his Tuesday speech, Sheikh Tamim suggested that the Shura Council is not a representative parliament in a democratic system.

He said that in Qatar there are direct civil relations between the people and the government and there are accepted norms and procedures for direct communication between the people and the regime.

But it's not just about rolling back Qatar's experiment with representative government. Last May, the ruler of oil-rich Kuwait dissolved his country's parliament for almost four years. Although Kuwait's parliament is struggling, it represents the freest legislature in the Gulf Arab state and can challenge the country's rulers.

More than a decade after the 2011 Arab Spring protests, we have been witnessing such a retreat for some time, said Christine Smith Diwan, senior resident scholar at the Institute for the Arab States of the Gulf in Washington.

It's important to remember that there has been debate on this topic and that there has been grassroots social pressure for greater representation and accountability, Diwan said. But that moment seems to have passed.